What is Color Management and Why Should I Care?

Color management is an integral part of any color work. If you do not understand or use color management, you can never achieve good consistent, reproducible color. Producing high quality display prints from a computer file or original requires a "good eye", the right equipment, quality media and the experience to do it right.

Color Management vs. Color Matching

Color management is not the same as color matching. Color management is a procedure for maintaining consistent, predictable colors from scanning to proofing to final print. 
Color matching (or color correction) is a process of altering a color or range of colors to match an existing piece.

Every output device (monitor, laser printer, inkjet printer, etc.) has it's own range of colors it can produce (called its gamut). This gamut can be altered by the type of inks, media, color settings in software, or lighting conditions. RGB monitors typically can reproduce a wider range of colors than CMYK printers. Which is why the wonderful blue you see on your screen can come out purple on your printout. If you want to delve more into gamut read Why Don't the Colors on My Print Match the Colors on My Monitor?

In order to get the full potential of the gamut of a particular device you need a way to modify the colors available to fit the gamut of that device. The way to do that is with a ICC Profile.

BT&D^TM has made a considerable investment in the latest equipment and time to maintain consistent, accurate color from our monitors to printed output. We calibrate all of our equipment and create custom profiles for each media we print on. You can be assured that the graphics you get from us are consistent and accurate time and again.

What's an ICC Profile?

Icc profiles are files that contain the color characteristics (basically tables of numbers) of the device they are created for - whether it be a monitor, printer or scanner. The profile allows the device to reproduce the colors of a graphic as accurately as possible within the gamut of that device. ICC profiles for your scanner, monitor and printer are essential for color management.

Profiles are instrumental in converting RGB images into CMYK or vice versa. One misnomer is the way to convert an image in Photoshop from RGB to CMYK would be to pick Image, Mode, CMYK. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Ever convert an RGB image this way and it looks washed out? The correct way (if you are using CS and above) is to select Edit, Convert to Profile, and select the CMYK Profile you want to convert.

BT&D's Color Matching Policy

Color can be very subjective. BT&D^TM strives for pleasing color in images and a perceptual match for Pantone colors. The vast majority of the time this is satisfactory.
If a color match is important to you, you must run a proof off of our equipment. We will then modify the color or colors that you select for a more accurate match to what you are looking for. There is a nominal charge for this service.

If you are not using color management, then you are shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to getting good color. I have heard many people say they don't need color management. I have seen those same people sit at their computer and manually adjust their images, sometimes for hours, to get the color right on their little desktop printer. Then they are aghast when they print that same image on another printer or take it to an outside service and it comes out washed out or over saturated. Will color management make this image print the same on all printers? No. Different devices have their own gamut. What is will do is make the image more reproducible on that other printer and outside service.

BT&D Visual Graphics, 2358 Hassell Road, Suite J, Hoffman Estates, IL 60169
(847)882-0369 Ph, (847) 882-6536 Fx, info@btdgraphics.com