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Color Management: In Brief
An overview of color management issues involved in translating digital images across mediums and devices.
Mediums and Devices
Different devices and mediums present color differently. Ink on paper is different than phosphors in a monitor, and light shining through film is different again.
Each device in the chain of image creation recognizes and communicates color differently: film camera, digital camera, digital scanner, monitor, printer, projector, etc.
Complicating this further, no two devices are exactly alike. Two devices of the same brand and model may be similar, but two monitors of different manufacturers can differ radically. This phenomenon is obvious when you stand before an in-store display of television sets all playing the same program.
Professionals in graphic and image-related fields need to reproduce color as consistently as possible across devices and mediums. If a photographer photographs a red rose, he needs to be sure the final printed image will recreate the same tones of red.
Color Management Profiles
To achieve this, in the digital realm, professionals use an array of strategies and protocols collectively referred to as “color management.”
Color management allows each device (monitor, printer, scanner, camera) to have a digital “profile” which describes its specific representation of color. Software can then compare different color profiles which, in effect, translates color information from one device to the next.
The digital image files we created at the Teaching Enhancement Center from your original slides contain embedded color profile information. Software that uses color management will read this information and translate the file so that it displays properly on the current device.
For example, with all devices properly profiled and color management software properly set, if you scan a photograph with a Nikon scanner, view the image in Adobe Photoshop, and print the image to an HP printer, the resulting images (both screen display and print) should very nearly match the original.
To do the above, accurate profiles of your devices — scanner, monitor, printer— must be available. (Most desktop inkjet printers do not provide profiles but automatically account for the profile of your monitor/system.)
You create a monitor profile that accounts for your hardware and the lighting conditions of its environment by calibrating your monitor.
NEXT: Calibrate Your Monitor - Windows Platform / Calibrate Your Monitor - Mac Platform
Or Jump To:
- Color Management: In Brief
- For Further Information on Color Management
- After Color Management: Editing Images
