Chapter 5. Color Settings: Understanding Photoshop s Color Management

5. Color Settings: Understanding Photoshop's Color Management

Welcome to the heart of Real World Photoshop CS2. We consider every topic in this book to be important, but color managementand let's make no mistake here, this chapter is all about color managementis one of those topics that can quickly make anyone feel stupid. If you're under the delusion that you can use Photoshop without using color management, this chapter is a must-read. Without understanding how Photoshop handles color behind the scenes, there's no way to get great color (or black-and-white) images out of this program.

Fortunately, while behind the scenes Photoshop's color management system uses mathematics that approach rocket science, using these tools is much simpler: You need to understand a few key concepts, learn where the buttons are, and use common sense in deciding when to push them.

In the last chapter, we broke the sad news that RGB and CMYK are very ambiguous ways of specifying color, since the actual color you get will vary from device to device. In this chapter, we'll look at the features Photoshop offers to make what you see on the screen at least resemble, if not actually match, what you get in your printed output.

There aren't any major changes in functionality in the color management features of Photoshop CS2 since the last version. However, several key commands have been moved to different menu locations, and labels have changed.