Controlling Color

It may seem strange to devote a whole chapter to a handful of commands, but the settings that deal with defining, converting, and displaying color are so important that you really need to understand what they do, and when and how they do it. Use these features correctly, and you'll produce predictable, repeatable color more easily than ever; use them incorrectly, or ignore them, and you'll be doomed to "chase color" through cycle after cycle of corrections and proofs.

In this chapter, we'll focus on six features:

• Color Settings

• The Color Picker

• Assign Profile

• Convert to Profile

• Proof Setup

• Print with Preview

We'll explain what each does, how they interact, and how you can use them, both to communicate color clearly and to see what your output will look like ahead of time, whether it's print CMYK, print RGB, or the Web.

If you're new to the concepts behind color management, you'll likely find that just diving into Photoshop's dialog boxes is more than a tad overwhelming. Even experienced Photoshop users may find a 30,000-foot overview helpful. So before we look in detail at the color management features in Photoshop CS2, let's step back a little and discuss just what color management is and how it's supposed to work.