Synchronizing Color Among Devices

One of the most challenging aspects of creating color documents for output on paper or electronically is maintaining consistent color among the images and text in those documents. Each device you use, such as monitors, printers, scanners, cameras, and so on, can have a slightly different interpretation of particular colors and can use a different color space. This makes creating a document that contains the colors you really want difficult.

Apple's ColorSync technology is an attempt to solve this problem. With ColorSync, you configure a ColorSync profile for each device with which you work. If all your devices use a ColorSync profile, the colors across the elements of your document should be consistent because ColorSync translates colors across different color spaces.

The two general steps to use ColorSync are the following:

1.	Use the ColorSync Utility to select and configure a ColorSync profile for each device you will use.
2.	Use the color management features of the application you want to use to create a document to select the ColorSync workflow for that project.

Configuring ColorSync

To configure a ColorSync profile for your devices, do the following:

NOTE

To use ColorSync, a device must have a ColorSync profile installed. For many devices, this profile is built in to Mac OS X. For others, the profile is installed when you install software related to that device.

1.	Open the ColorSync Utility (Applications/Utilities). The first time you run this, you'll be prompted to run Profile First Aid, which will attempt to repair the various profiles stored on your Mac.
2.	Click Repair. The Profile First Aid utility will run and find all the profiles stored on your Mac. It will find problems and repair any that it can.
3.	Click the Devices button to open the Devices pane. On this pane, you will see the list of devices with color implications connected to your Mac, such as cameras, printers, displays, and so on (see Figure 30.24). Figure 30.24. Expand a device type to see a list of devices of that type connected to your Mac.
4.	Choose the device you want to configure. The current ColorSync profile for that device will be shown.
5.	To select a different profile, click the Current Profile pop-up menu and choose the profile you want to use. If the one you want to use is not shown on the menu, choose Other and then move to and select the profile you do want to use.
6.	Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each device you want to use with ColorSync.

If you can't find profiles for the devices you want to use, see "I Don't See a ColorSync Profile for My Device" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

NOTE

Understanding and using ColorSync effectively is a very complex topic. For detailed information, see Apple's ColorSync website located at www.apple.com/colorsync.

Using ColorSync

After you have installed and configured your device profiles and workflows, the way you use ColorSync depends on the particular applications you use. For example, you can employ the ColorSync profiles when you print a document by using the ColorSync option on the Options pop-up menu in the Print dialog box. Other applications, such as Photoshop, enable you to employ more sophisticated ColorSync features.