Determining Where Color Management Is Being Applied

In addition to providing color management infrastructure for hardware and software vendors, operating system-level color management systems provide benefits for consumers and others who use, for example, a digital camera and an inkjet photo printer and who don't want to think about color management they just want colors to look right. If, however, you're an advanced digital photographer, graphic designer, or offset printer using higher-end applications, you probably want more control over your workflow.

The main limitation of system-level color management systems is that applications must specifically take advantage of the system in the OS. Many consumer-level applications do so in a seamless fashion, which provides more accurate color for their users.

The problem is that popular high-end design applications, such as the components of the Adobe Creative Suite (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, and Acrobat) and QuarkXPress, do not make full use of system-level solutions such as ICM. Rather, companies such as Adobe have built their own color management technologies into their applications so that they have a system that works on both Windows and the Mac and provides more advanced features for controlling the color workflow. While the color management technologies in these applications often make some use of ICM, they largely use their own color management.

One easy way to determine whether an application implements its own color management is to see whether it includes color management preferences or settings. If it does, the application or device likely is using its own system.

Workflows that involve professional design and imaging applications and devices have many variables, and therefore managing color in them is more complicated. Chapters 5 through 9 of this book focus on implementing color-managed workflows using popular applications and devices and include step-by-step exercises on setting up applications and managing color through the process.