Chapter 5. Color Management

Color can evoke a deep emotional response in many people. It can also evoke a deep emotional response from your clients if your colors don't look as they expect. The problem is that the perception of color is subjective, both for humans and for the devices we use to produce or represent colors.

One of the problems we have as designers is that each device in our workflow represents color differently. The blue in an image you scan, for example, will look a little different on your Mac's display, and even more different when you output it to a color laser printer. Different printers can't even reproduce the same range of colors. If you print a document to an inkjet printer, and then print it again to a laser printer, the outputs will look different.

Color management aims to fix that by telling each device you use how every other device in your workflow deals with color.

Tip

If you want to learn about color and color management in detail, get a copy of Real World Color Management, by Fred Bunting, Bruce Fraser, and Chris Murphy (Peachpit Press, 2006). It takes you from the very basics of color up through creating your own color-managed workflow. This is the guide I turn to whenever I have color-management questions.