What is Color Management?

What is Color Management? Pare and Focus.com coler managemert is a way to get different devices and programs (like cameras, printers, desktop photo editors, and web browsers) to produce colors that look the same. it works like this ... Each device can produce a set of colors, called a color space.. Color spaces are kind of like different boxes of crayons. Some are bigger than others. ARGB crayons SRGB Crayons CMYK Crayons Some devices and programs (like some cameras, and photo editors) can choose to use a smaller color pace, or a larger one. Other devices and programs (like some browsers, and home printers) don't get a choice. They have to use a smaller color space. problems AAAAAAAAAA When your camera, and your photo editing program both use a large color space, like ARGB, the picture turns out great. ARGB Crayons But a browser like Firefox has to use a smaller color space, called SRGB. It's not very good at translating from a bigger box of crayons to its smaller box, so the picture looks duller, and less vibrant. SRGB Crayons The same thing can happen when you print, since many home printers are only able to produce colors from a smaller color CMYK Crayons space. Even professionally printed photos on photographic paper are in a smaller color space. last in translation Smaller color spaces are perfectly capable of making great looking pictures. You just have to make sure that colors don't get lost in the translation from a biger color space to a smaller one. try this. SRGB Crayons SRGB Crayons Use the smaller color space SRGB from start to finish. This way, no translation is SRGB eray o really necessary. or this ... MAMAAM4AAM AAAAAAAAAw ARGB rayon SRGB Crayons Use aRGB in your camera, then convert the photo to SRGB in a photo editor like GIMP or Photoshop. SRGB Cray 44014 GIMP and Photoshop do a better job of translating colors than a browser, or home printer will. Since you're already in a photo editor, you can tweek colors after you convert them. dotaila ... ProPhoto RGB Adobe RGB This represents actual color spaces. Some color SRGB spaces have a broader range of colors in them, 2200 Matt Paper some have a smaller range. And, none of them contain the full range of colors that we can see with our eyes. Horseshoe Shape of Visible Color Your monitor has a lot to do with the way you see digital colors, too. If it's not calibrated properly, it might make colors look different than they did on your camera. Same goes for your printer. But, good color management, with properly calibrated devices will make all the difference in making your colors look true to life. For more info on Color Management, check out Pare and Focus.com