Color management

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers by Martin Evening, ISBN 0 240 51690 7
is published by Focal Press, an imprint of Elsevier Science. The title will be available from the
beginning of August 2002. Here are four easy ways to order direct from the publishers:
By phone: Call our Customer Services department on 01865 888180 with your credit card details.
By mail: Write to Heinemann Customer Services Department, PO BOX 840, Halley Court, Jordan
Hill, Oxford OX2 8YW
By Fax: Fax an order on 01865 314091
By email: Send to bhuk.orders@repp.co.uk
By web: www.focalpress.com.
Orders from the US and Canada should be placed on 1-800-366-2665 (1-800-366-BOOK) or tel:
314-453-7010. Email: custserv.bh@elsevier.com The title will be stocked in most major bookstores
throughout the UK and US and via many resellers worldwide. It will also be available for purchase
through the online bookstores Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

The following extract is part one of a guide to Photoshop 7.0 color management.

P
hotoshop 5.0 was justifiably praised as a ground-breaking upgrade when it was
released in the summer of 1998. The changes made to the color management
setup were less well received in some quarters. This was because the revised
system was perceived to be extremely complex and unnecessary. Some color profes-
sionals felt we already had reliable methods of matching color and you did not need
ICC profiles and the whole kaboodle of Photoshop ICC color management to achieve
this. The aim of this chapter is to start off by introducing the basic concepts of color
management – the first part will help you to understand the principles of why color
management is necessary. And as you will discover, there are some important historical
reasons why certain Photoshop users feel they have no need to use ICC profiled
color management. We will be looking at the reasons for this and then go on to
consider the advantages of an ICC profiled workflow and lastly, how to optimize the
Photoshop color engine settings. This latter section will take you step by step through
the Photoshop Color Settings interface.

The need for color management

An advertising agency art buyer was once invited to address a meeting of photogra-
phers for a discussion about photography and the Internet. The chair, Mike Laye,
suggested we could ask him anything we wanted, except ‘Would you like to see my
book?’ And if he had already seen your book, we couldn’t ask him why he hadn’t
called it back in again. And if he had called it in again we were not allowed to ask
why we didn’t get the job. And finally, if we did get the job we were absolutely forbidden
to ask him why the color in the printed ad looked nothing like the original transparency!

1
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

That in a nutshell is a problem which has bugged us all our working lives. And it is
one which will be familiar to anyone who has ever experienced the difficulty of
matching colors on a computer system with the original or a printed output. Figure
4.1 has two versions of the same photograph. One shows how the Photoshop image
is previewed on the monitor and the other is an example of how a printer might
interpret and reproduce those same colors. Why can there be such a marked differ-
ence between what is seen on the screen and the actual printed result? The computer
monitor will have manual controls that allow you to adjust the brightness and con-
trast (and in some cases the RGB color as well), so we have some element of basic
control there. And the printer will also probably allow you to make color balance
adjustments, but is this really enough though? And if you are able to get the monitor
and your printer to match, will the colors you are seeing in the image appear the
same on another person’s monitor?

Why not all RGB spaces are the same

Figure 4.1 The picture on the left shows how you would see the Photoshop image on your screen
and the one on the right represents how that same image will print if sent directly to a proofing
printer without applying any form of color management. This is an actual simulation of what happens
when raw RGB data is sent without any form of compensation being applied to balance the output to
what is seen on the screen.

You might think it is merely a matter of making the output color less blue in order to successfully
match the original. Yes, that would get the colors closer, but when trying to match color between
different digital devices, the story is actually a lot more complex than that. The color management
system that was first introduced in Photoshop 5.0 will enable you to make use of ICC profiles and
match these colors from the scanner to the screen and to the print proofer with extreme accuracy.

Client: Clipso. Model: Sheri at Nevs.

2
 Color management

Figure 4.2 All digital devices have individual output characteristics, even if they look identical on the
outside. In a TV showroom you will typically notice each television displaying a different colored image.

What you have just witnessed illustrates why color management is so important. It is
all very well getting everything balanced to look OK on your monitor and knowing
how to tweak your printer settings to look right. But there is a better way, one that
will allow you to mix and match any number of digital devices. Go into any TV show
room and you will probably see rows of televisions all tuned to the same broadcast
source but each displaying the picture quite differently. This is a known problem that
affects all digital imaging devices, be they digital cameras, scanners, monitors or
printers. Each digital imaging device has its own unique characteristics. And unless
you are able to quantify what those individual device characteristics are, you won’t
be able to communicate effectively with other device components and programs in
your own computer setup, let alone anyone working outside your system color loop.

The way things were

What follows is a brief summary of working practices in the repro industry, but keen
amateurs might also be interested to learn about some of the background history to
color management. Ten years ago, most photographers only used their computers to
do basic administration work and there were absolutely no digital imaging devices to
be found in a photographer’s studio (unless you counted the photocopier). At the end
of a job we would supply transparencies or prints to the client and that was the limit
of our responsibilities. Our photographs then went to the printer to be digitized using

3
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

a high-end drum scanner to produce a CMYK file. The scanner would be configured
to produce a CMYK file ready to insert in a specific publication. If color corrections
were required, the scanner operators carried this out themselves on the output file.
These days a significant number of photographers, illustrators and artists are now
originating their own files from digital cameras, desktop scanners or directly within
Photoshop. This effectively removes the repro expert who previously did all the
scanning and matching of the colors on the press. Imagine for a moment what would
happen if our traffic laws permitted a sudden influx of inexperienced and unaccom-
panied teenage learner drivers on to our roads? This will give you some indication of
the ‘printer rage’ that ensued when Photoshop users began delivering digital files
instead of transparencies. There is no getting away from the fact that if you supply
digital images to a printer, you will be deemed responsible should any problems
occur in the printing. This may seem like a daunting task, but with Photoshop it is
not hard to color manage your images with confidence. It need only take a few min-
utes to calibrate your monitor with the Adobe Gamma control panel and to configure
the Photoshop Color Settings. But we’ll come to that later on.

CMYK color management

Printers naturally have an ‘output-centric’ view of color management. Their main

concern is getting the CMYK color to look right on a CMYK press. Accordingly,
you will hear an argument that suggests you don’t need ICC profiles to get accurate
CMYK color. In fact, if you know your numbers, you don’t even need a color moni-
tor. In this respect you can say they are right. These proven techniques have served
the printing industry well for many years. But most Photoshop users and especially
those who are photographers, face a far more complex color management problem,
because we don’t all have the luxury of managing the one scanner linked to a single
press. We quite often have to handle digital files sourced from many different types of
RGB devices such as: digital cameras, desktop scanners, Photo CD, picture libraries etc.

RGB devices

If your production workflow is limited to working with the one high-end scanner
and a known press output, then the number of variables in your workflow is limited
and it would not be difficult to synchronize everything in-house. But this is not the
experience of an average Photoshop user. Instead of handling color between a few
known digital devices in a fixed loop, you are faced with files coming from any
number of unknown digital devices. If we all worked with the same few pieces of
digital capture devices (like in the old days when there were only a handful of high-
end scanner devices) the problem would be not so bad. But in the last decade or so

4
 Color management

the numbers of different types of capture devices has grown enormously. When you
take into account all the different monitors that are in existence and other Photoshop
users who supply you with files of unknown provenance, and well, you get the pic-
ture! Since the explosion of new desktop scanners and digital cameras arriving on
the market, the publishing industry has been turned on its head. This is a relatively
new phenomenon and the old way of doing things no longer holds all the answers
when it comes to synchronizing color between so many unknown users and digital
devices. On top of this our clients may expect us to output to digital proofing de-
vices, Lambda printers, Pictrographs, Iris printers, web pages, and ultimately a four-
color press. An appreciation of CMYK printing is important, but in addition to this,
you will possibly have to control the input and output between many different RGB
color devices before a file is ready to go to press.

Not all RGB color devices are the same

Consider for a moment the scale of the color management task. We wish to capture a
full color original subject, digitize it with a scanner or digital camera, examine the
resulting image via a computer screen and finally reproduce it in print. It is possible
with today’s technology to simulate the expected print output of a digitized image on
the screen with remarkable accuracy. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate
the huge difference between the mechanics of all the various bits of equipment used
in the above production process. Most digital devices work using RGB color and just
like musical instruments, they all possess unique color tonal properties, such that no
two devices are identical or will be able to reproduce color exactly the same way as
another device can. Some equipment is capable of recording colors that are beyond
the limits of human vision. Nor is it always possible to match in print all the colors
which are visible to the human eye. Converting light into electrical signals via a
device such as a CCD chip is not the same as projecting pixels onto a computer
screen or the process of reproducing a photograph with colored ink on paper.

ICC profiled color management

We are all familiar with magazine reviews of digital cameras. At some point the
magazine may print a spread of photos where a comparison is made of all the differ-
ent models and the results achieved from photographing the same subject. The ob-
ject of this exercise being to emphasize the difference in the capture quality of each
camera when each file is brought directly into Photoshop, without any compensation
being made. If you could quantify or ‘characterize’ those differences then it should
be possible to accurately describe the color captured by any camera or scanner.

5
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

The International Color Consortium (ICC) is an industry body representing the manu-
facturers of imaging hardware and software who devised a common method of inter-
preting color between one device and another. The ICC profiling system has been
adopted in a number of guises, such as Apple’s ColorSync™. All ICC systems are
basically able to translate the color gamut of the source space via a reference space
and accurately convert these colors to the gamut of the destination space. The color
conversion processing is carried out by the Color Matching Module or CMM. In
Photoshop you have a choice of three CMMs: Adobe Color Engine (ACE), Apple or
Heidelberg. Figure 4.8 shows a graphical illustration of a CMM at work.

So let’s imagine a scenario where everyone is working in a profile-free, digital

workflow. Who would have the hardest job of managing the color? The printer can
color correct a CMYK image ‘by the numbers’ if they wish. Take a look at the pho-
tograph of the young model in Figure 4.3. Her Caucasian flesh tones should at least
contain equal amounts of magenta and yellow ink with maybe a slightly greater
amount of yellow, while the cyan ink should be a quarter to a third of the magenta.
This rule will hold true for most CMYK press conditions. The accompanying table
compares the CMYK and RGB space measurements of a flesh tone color. Unlike
CMYK, there are no set formulae to describe the RGB pixel values of a flesh tone. If
you were to write down the flesh tone numbers for every RGB device color space,
you could in theory build an RGB color space reference table. And from this you
could feasibly construct a system that would assign meaning to these RGB numbers
for any given RGB space. This is basically what an ICC profile does except an ICC
profile will contain maybe several hundred color reference points. These can be read
and interpreted automatically by the Photoshop software.

Figure 4.3 The above tables record the color readings for a flesh tone in RGB and CMYK color spaces.

6
 Color management

Figure 4.4 This is an example of a Kodak color target which is used to construct a color ICC profile.
Thomas Holm of Pixl in Denmark sent me five separate files, including the one above. Each file was
opened in Photoshop without any color conversion and the file was sent directly to the printer, again
without any color modification.The print outputs, which contained over 800 color reference swatches,
were then sent back to Pixl. They then measured all the color data information using an X-Rite
spectrophotometer and from this constructed an accurate profile for my Pictrograph printer using
Kodak ColorFlow 2.1 software and emailed the profile back to me.
<email@pixl.dk>

Figure 4.4 shows an example of a Kodak test target which is used to build an ICC
profile. A target like this can either be scanned or photographed with a digital camera
and the input color values compared using special software. In this case, I printed out
the targets without using any color management – this gave a picture of how the
printer would reproduce raw digital data directly from Photoshop. The printed tar-
gets were then measured using a spectrophotometer, the results evaluated and used
to build a color profile for the color printer. As you can see, the profiling method will
tell us so much more about the characteristics of a digital device like a camera or a
scanner than could ever be achieved by just tweaking the monitor RGB gamma val-
ues to match the color balance of a specific output.

All RGB device spaces are different and without an accompanying profile, the RGB
number values will lack specific meaning. Without profiles, the only way to com-
pensate the color between different RGB devices was to adjust the monitor to reflect
the color of the print output. This is like profiling, but is using only the midrange
color balance to adjust the color. The ‘mess up the monitor to look like the print’
approach is seriously flawed and if you take a look at the examples in Figure 4.5 you
will see why. If you plot the color gamut of a device as a 3D shape, you will notice

7
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

Figure 4.5 The above photographs have been reproduced without any color management being
used. This illustrates not only how the color reproduction ends up being different from each color
space, the gamut map of each space is also very different in character.

that the gamuts of these devices and edit spaces have their own distinctive signature
shapes. It is not a simple a matter of making the screen a little more red to match the
reddish print. Color managing your images in this way can be about as successful as
hammering a square peg into a round hole!

In Daniel Defoe’s book, Robinson Crusoe faced something of a furniture manage-

ment problem. He tried to make the legs of his table stay level by sawing bits off
some of the legs. As soon as he had managed to even up two or more of the legs, he
found that one of the others would now be too long. And the more he attempted to fix
the problem with his saw, the shorter the table became. A similar thing happens when
you try to color manage through adjusting the monitor settings. You may be able to

8
 Color management

obtain a good match for the skin tones, but if your subject is wearing a blue suit, the
color might be way off and if you then compensate successfully for the blue clothing, the
skin tones will no longer be true or some other color will reproduce incorrectly. You
will not be able to achieve consistently matching results using this method of color
management.

Switching on Photoshop ICC color management

A profile is therefore a useful piece of information that can be embedded in an image

file. When a profile is read by Photoshop and color management is switched on,
Photoshop is automatically able to find out everything it needs to know in order to
manage the color correctly from there on. Note that this will also be dependent on
you calibrating your monitor, but essentially all you have to do apart from that is to
open the Photoshop Color Settings from the Edit menu and select a suitable preset
such as the US Prepress Default setting. Do this and you are all set to start working in
an ICC color managed workflow. Think of a profile as being like a ZIP code for
images. For example, the address label shown in Figure 4.6 was rather optimistically
sent to me at ‘Flat 14, London’, but thanks to the ZIP code it arrived safely! Some
bureaux have been known to argue that profiles cause color management problems.
This I am afraid is like a courier company explaining that the late delivery of your
package was due to you including a ZIP code in the delivery address. A profile can be
read or it can be ignored. It will certainly not be harmful to anyone who is using a
non-ICC workflow.

Figure 4.6 Even if you have never been to London

before, you know it’s a fairly big place and ‘Flat
14, London’ was not going to help the postman
much to locate my proper address. However, the
all-important ZIP code or postcode was able to
help identify exactly where the letter should have
been delivered. An image profile is just like a ZIP
code, it can tell Photoshop everything it needs
to know about a file’s provenance.

Monitor profiling
The first step to making color management work in Photoshop is to calibrate the
monitor screen. There are several ways of doing this. As a minimum step towards
monitor calibration and profile making, you are now advised to utilize the monitor
calibration utilities provided by the Macintosh or use the Adobe Gamma control
panel on a PC system to calibrate the screen and build a basic monitor profile. A

9
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

better solution, if you can afford it, is to purchase a hardware calibration device and
software package. Some monitors like the Apple ColorSync and Barco feature built-
in internal calibration. All these methods are doing the same thing – they optimize
the monitor contrast and brightness, neutralize the color balance of the display and
build a monitor profile. The aim is to standardize the monitor display and provide a
report in the form of an ICC monitor profile. As shall be explained later, the monitor
profile will then be automatically used by Photoshop to accurately display on the
screen all profiled color files.

People often ask ‘How can I be sure that the color I see is the same as what someone
else is seeing?’ How reliable are an individual person’s eyes when it comes to deter-
mining how to neutralize the display? There are several factors which can determine
color perception, not least the health of a person’s eyes. As you get older the color
vision of your eyes will change, plus some people are color blind and may not even
be aware of this. For the most part, younger people in their twenties and with healthy
vision will perceive colors more consistently and with greater precision. Then there
is also the question of how we interpret color – human vision is adaptable and we
tend to accommodate our vision to changes in lighting and color temperature and
can be influenced by the presence of other colors around us.

Monitor calibration

Before you carry out any monitor calibration, the monitor should be left switched on
for at least half an hour to give it a chance to warm up and stabilize. You should get
rid of any distracting background colors or patterns on the computer desktop. You
should ideally have a neutral gray desktop background and this is especially impor-
tant when you are calibrating the screen by eye. One way to achieve this is to open an
image up in Photoshop and set the screen display to full screen mode with the gray
pasteboard filling the screen. Consider also the impact of lighting conditions and the
viewing environment. The walls of the room you are working in should be a neutral
color and the light levels kept low throughout the day. This will help to preserve the
contrast of the monitor and lessen unwanted reflections from the screen.

With the advent of Photoshop 7.0, Adobe is no longer bundling a version of

Adobe Gamma with the Macintosh package. It is assumed that ColorSync will
handle everything in the Mac OS X, and leaves the field wide open for third
parties to develop products for Mac OS 9.x. But the Adobe Gamma control panel
is still available in the Goodies folder on the master CD, should you wish to
continue using it. The following steps show you how to neutralize a cathode ray
tube (CRT) monitor and create a monitor profile on the Mac OS X system.

10
 Color management

Mac OS X calibration

To launch the Display Calibration Assistant, click on the Displays icon in the System preferences and
click on the Calibrate button. The opening screen introduces the calibration utility and steps to
create a monitor profile. Check the Expert Mode button at the bottom of the screen.

Contrast and brightness

You will then be asked to adjust the monitor brightness control so that the gray circle inside the
larger box just becomes visible and the two darker halves of the square appear to be a solid black.
This step optimizes the monitor to display at its full dynamic range and establishes the optimum
brightness for the shadow tones.

11
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

Neutralizing the color

If you are using a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor the calibration assistant will display the following
dialog with the red, green and blue squares. This will allow you to adjust the gamma of the individual
red, green and blue monitor colors. Squint your eyes as you adjust the individual color gamma sliders,
so that the patterned stripes in the boxes appear to blend with the solid Apple logo in the middle.

Target Gamma

if you have a flat screen monitor connected to your computer or you have already installed a third-
party monitor calibration utility, the Calibration Assistant will recognize this and bypass the previous
dialog, to display the target gamma screen. If you are using a Macintosh computer, select the Mac
Standard 1.8 gamma.

12
 Color management

White point

Now we come to the white point settings. I would advise choosing a white point of 6500 K.You might
be guided to choose a white point of 5000 K, because this is the color temperature of a calibrated,
proofing lightbox, but the screen will look rather dull and have a slightly yellow cast, so stick to using
a 6500 K white point.

Conclusion

Name the new monitor profile and click on the Create button.You will have created an ICC profile that
describes the current characteristics of the monitor and which Photoshop will automatically recognize.
Photoshop will utilize this profile information in the color management process without further interven-
tion.You have just successfully calibrated your monitor’s brightness, contrast and color balance.

13
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

Calibrating a PC monitor with Adobe Gamma

The Adobe Gamma control panel should be located in the Program files/Common
files/Adobe/Calibration folder which can be easily accessed on a PC by going to My
Computer and selecting Control Panels. Adobe Gamma will now work with most PC
computers, providing the video card will allow Adobe Gamma to interact with the
monitor tube. Do not use the older Gamma control panel which shipped with
Photoshop 4.0 or earlier. This older control panel must be discarded.

When you launch Adobe Gamma, you have a choice of using it in either Control
Panel or Step By Step (Assistant) mode. Select the Assistant radio button and click
Next. If you already have a monitor profile, such as a canned profile supplied by the
manufacturer, click the Load... button, locate this profile and use that as your starting
point. Any existing monitor profiles should be found in the ICM Color Profiles folder.
If not, any will do as a starting point here. You will be asked to set the monitor
contrast to maximum. The single gamma display box will only allow you to adjust
the relative brightness. But since you will want to neutralize the color as well, uncheck
the View Single Gamma Only box and adjust the three color boxes as outlined in the
Mac OS X calibration routine.

The Windows default gamma is 2.2 and this is the best monitor gamma setting for
most Windows graphics cards. The white point should be 6500 K, if unsure, try
clicking on the Measure... button and following the on-screen directions. The next
screen asks if you want to work with a different white point other than that entered in
the previous screen. Unless you have a particular need to alter the white point, leave
this set to Same as Hardware.

Figure 4.7 If you are using a third-

party method of profiling the monitor
on the Macintosh, other than a system
utility, you may be required to manu-
ally load this profile next to where it
says Display Profile in the ColorSync
Control Panel (OS 9),or in the ColorSync
System preference (Mac OS X). On
a PC, you will probably need to care-
fully consult the instructions which
came with the calibration device. These
should guide you through the intricacies
of how to configure the Windows
system setups.

14
 Color management

The value of a calibrated display

If you follow the steps just described, you will now have yourself a calibrated moni-
tor. On the Macintosh, the profile should be saved in the System/ColorSync Pro-
files folder. On a PC machine, save to the Windows/System/Color folder. A stan-
dard calibration utility like the one just shown is the simplest way of checking that
your screen is neutral and is making full use of the display contrast to fully render the
shadow and highlight tones correctly. This will get you on the right track with re-
gards being able to open up an image in Photoshop and seeing it with the same
brightness and color neutrality as seen on someone else’s calibrated system.

The display calibrator utility just shown is effective, but it is still rather basic. There
are other, better monitor profiling solutions you might consider using. A hardware
calibration device combined with a dedicated software utility will be able to build a
much more accurate monitor profile. The LaCie bluescreen prepress monitors can be
sold with an optional Blue Eye calibrator device. ColorVisions <www.colorcal.com>
make several calibration units, starting with the very affordable Monitor Spyder and
PhotoCal software bundle. For really accurate monitor calibration consider the X-
Rite DTP 92 with OptiCal software or the very versatile Eye-One devices from Gretag
Macbeth, which can be used to build profiles of almost everything in your studio.
Monitor profiling devices are attached to the screen via rubber suckers. As I said in
Chapter One, most LCD type screens cannot be profiled, apart from certain devices
such as the Apple, Wacom and Formac displays. A normal calibrating device will
easily damage the delicate screen surface, so a special calibrator must be used. These
calibrators have a strap with a weight on the other end and are hung over the top of
the screen and will gently rest the calibrator against the screen surface. The calibra-
tion software will display a series of color patches on the screen and these are read
by the calibrating device and the information is used to build a profile. If you have a
third-party device or a built-in monitor calibration system, always use this in prefer-
ence to anything else. If you still have Adobe Gamma installed, disable it and do not
try to use both systems. The performance of the monitor will fluctuate over time as
well as on a daily basis. It is therefore important to check and calibrate the monitor at
regular intervals. Remember, monitor calibration plays an essential part in establish-
ing a first link in the color management chain.

The Photoshop color engine

Let’s put all the pieces together – the diagram in Figure 4.8 illustrates the ICC color
management route for handling ICC profiled files coming into Photoshop. It shows
the different types of RGB input sources such as desktop scanner files or Photo CD
images being brought into Photoshop. If an ICC profile is embedded in the file,

15
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

Figure 4.8 Photoshop’s ICC color management system revolves around the use of profile informa-
tion which will ideally accurately describe the characteristics of each digital device used in the chain
from capture to print. In the above example, Photoshop can read or make use of the profile relating
to any type of input source (the devices listed in the red boxes) and apply a conversion to the
destination or output (the devices listed in the green boxes) and maintain consistent color through-
out. Profiling the monitor (such as one of the monitors listed in the blue boxes at the top), using a
third-party measuring device ensures accuracy of the display of the color data on screen.

Photoshop will recognize this and know how to correctly interpret the color data.
The same thing applies to profiled CMYK files as well. Photoshop uses the monitor
profile information to render a color correct preview on the monitor screen. It helps
to understand here that in an ICC color managed workflow in Photoshop, what you
see on the monitor is always a color corrected preview and you are not viewing the
actual file data. This is what we call ‘device-independent color’. When an image is
in Adobe RGB and color management is switched on, what you see on the screen is
an RGB preview that has been converted from Adobe RGB to your profiled monitor
RGB. The same thing happens when Photoshop previews CMYK data on the screen.
The Photoshop color management system calculates a conversion from the file CMYK
space to the monitor space. Photoshop therefore carries out all its color calculations
in virtual color spaces. For example, the RGB color space you edit within can be
exactly the same as the work space set on another user’s Photoshop system. If you
are both viewing the same file, and your monitors are correctly calibrated and pro-
filed, you should be seeing near enough the exact same colors on the screen in
Photoshop.

16
 Color management

The profiled approach

To output a file from Photoshop in a color managed workflow, you will need to carry
out a further profile conversion from the current work space or file space, to the
printer’s color space. We will be looking at color managed file outputs in deservedly
more detail later on in Chapter Five. In the meantime, Figure 4.9 reexamines the
problem encountered at the beginning of this chapter where the skin tones in the
original image printed too blue. The profile created for this particular printer de-
scribes the variance. The (normally hidden) color shifting which occurs during the
profile conversion process will compensate by making the skin tone colors more red,
but apply less color compensation to other colors. The result is an output that more
closely matches the original. That is a simple illustration of the ICC-based color man-
agement system at work. All color can be managed this way in Photoshop from capture
source to the monitor display and the final proof.

Figure 4.9 As was shown in Figure 4.1, sending the color data direct to the printer without applying
any compensation will produce an incorrect color result. But applying a profile conversion with a
custom profile for the proof printer will invisibly convert the colors to compensate for the specific
characteristics of the printer and thereby produce a much more representative print of the original.
The bright red ‘profile converted’ image will compensate for the color space deficiencies of the
output device.

17
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

The versatility of RGB

There are those who remain critical of the introduction of ICC-based color manage-
ment in Photoshop. They look at the needs of their own setup and figure that what
works well for them has got to be right for everyone else. I travel quite a lot and once
I was driving off the normal tourist track and needed to find a decent road map, but
couldn’t find any local gas stations that sold one. When I enquired why, I was told
‘Because we all know where everything is around here!’ It seemed the locals had no
need to accommodate lost strangers around those parts.

You could say the same of some bureaux and printers because they work exclusively
at the final stage of the print process. If your main area of business revolves around
the preparation of CMYK separations for print, then I do recommend you invest in a
training course or book that deals with CMYK repro issues. I can highly recommend
the Real World Photoshop series by Bruce Fraser and David Blatner. Conversely,
photographers are mainly involved in the RGB capture end of the business. This is
one of the reasons why I devote so much attention to the managing of RGB color,
here and elsewhere in the book. But nevertheless, if any work you create is intended
for print, the issue of RGB to CMYK conversion must be addressed at some point.

The proliferation of Photoshop use and the advent of high quality digital cameras is
also another important factor to consider. If photographers are more likely to want to
supply a digital file at the end of a job, how will this fit in with existing workflows?
Printers have argued in the past that they would prefer the digital files turned back
into transparencies, so they can maintain the opportunity to scan it again themselves.
Most of their work is currently handled using original transparency film and there-
fore this is more convenient for them (and of course they maintain the scanning
business). But at what cost to the client? Since digital capture has clearly taken off in
a big way, that option will no longer exist. One way or another the RGB to CMYK
issue will have to be resolved. The early adopters of digital camera systems were
repro houses and they are therefore having to investigate ways and means of han-
dling RGB files and the use of independent hardware/software solutions to carry out
the conversion to CMYK. If, as has been proved, professional quality digital cam-
eras become more widely used, photographers will either be turning those digital
files back into transparencies to be scanned again by the printer, or supplying digital
files direct. As I see it, the latter is the only viable option and the real issue is whether
the files should be converted to CMYK by the originator or the printer.

A major advantage of working in RGB is that you can access all the bells and whistles
of Photoshop which would otherwise be hidden or grayed out in CMYK mode. Mixed
final usage also needs to be taken into account – a photograph may get used in a
variety of ways and multiple CMYK separations will need to be made to suit several

18
 Color management

publications, each requiring a slightly different CMYK conversion because CMYK

is not a ‘one size fits all’ color space. High-end retouching for advertising usage is
usually done in RGB mode and a large format transparency output produced. That
transparency can be used as an original to be scanned again and converted to CMYK
but the usual practice is to use the transparency output for client approval only. The
CMYK conversions and film separations are produced working directly from the
digital file to suit the various media usages. When you think about it, a transparency
proof for all its glory is actually quite useless considering the end product is to be
printed on paper. The ideal proof should be a CMYK output printed to match the
expected output of the final publication. At the same time, the RGB original can and
should be preserved in RGB mode as a master archive image.

There is life beyond CMYK. Hexachrome is a six-color ink printing process that
extends the range of color depth attainable beyond conventional limitations of
CMYK. This advanced process is currently available only through specialist print
shops and is suitable for high quality design print jobs. Millions have been invested
in the presses currently used to print magazines and brochures, so expect four-color
printing to still be around for a long time to come, but Hexachrome will open the
way for improved color reproduction from RGB originals. Photoshop supports six-
color channel output conversions from RGB, but you will need to buy a separate
plug-in utility like HexWrench. Spot color channels can be added and previewed on
screen – spot color files can be saved in DCS 2.0 or TIFF format. Screen publishing
is able to take advantage of the full depth of the RGB color range. If you are working
in a screen-based environment for CD, DVD and web publishing RGB is ideal, and
with today’s browsers color management can be turned on to take advantage of the
enhanced color control they now offer.

Choosing an RGB work space

Although I highly recommended that you switch on the color management settings
in Photoshop, you cannot assume that everyone else will. There are many other
Photoshop users and bureaux running outputs from files who will have Photoshop
color management switched off and probably not bothering to calibrate their moni-
tors properly. If you are using Photoshop 6.0 or later it matters less individually
which RGB color space you choose in the RGB setup, as long as you stick to using
the same space for all your work. Photoshop can safely convert between RGB spaces
with minimal loss of data, but the space you plump for does matter. Once chosen you
should not really change it, except when preparing images to go on the Web. Which-
ever color work space you select in the RGB color settings, you will have to be
conscious of how your profiled Photoshop RGB files may appear on a non-ICC
savvy Photoshop system. What follows is a guide to the listed RGB choices.

19
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers <www.photoshopforphotographers.com>

Apple RGB

This is the old Apple 13" monitor standard. In the early days of Photoshop this was
used as the default RGB editing space where the editing space was the same as the
monitor space. If you have legacy images created in Photoshop on a Macintosh computer
using a gamma of 1.8, you can assume Apple RGB to be the missing profile space.

sRGB IEC-61966-2.1

sRGB was conceived as a multi-purpose color space standard that consumer digital
devices could all standardize to. It is essentially a compromise color space that pro-
vides a uniform color space that all digital cameras and inkjet printers and monitors
can match to. sRGB aims to match the color gamut of a typical 2.2 gamma PC moni-
tor. Therefore if you are opening a file from a consumer digital camera or scanner
and there is no profile embedded, you can assume that the missing profile should be
sRGB. It is an ideal color space for web design but unsuitable for repro quality work.
The sRGB space clips the CMYK gamut and you will never get more than 75%–
85% cyan in your CMYK separations.

ColorMatch RGB

ColorMatch is an open standard monitor RGB space that was implemented by Ra-
dius. ColorMatch has a gamma of 1.8 and is favored by certain Mac users as the
RGB working space. Although not much larger than the gamut of a typical monitor space,
it is a known standard and more compatible with legacy, 1.8 gamma Macintosh files.

ProPhoto RGB

This is a large gamut RGB space that is suited for image editing that is intended for
output to photographic materials such as transparency emulsion or taking full advan-
tage of the color gamut of photo quality inkjet printers. Any image editing in a wide
gamut space should ideally only be done using 16 bits per channel mode.

Adobe RGB (1998)

Adobe RGB (1998) has become established as the recommended RGB editing space
for RGB files that are destined to be converted to CMYK. For example, the Photoshop
prepress color settings all use Adobe RGB as the RGB working space. Adobe RGB

20
 Color management

was initially labeled as SMPTE-240M which was a color gamut proposed for HDTV
production. As it happens, the coordinates Adobe used did not exactly match the
actual SMPTE-240M specification. Nevertheless, it proved a popular space for
prepress editing space for repro work and soon became known as Adobe RGB (1998).
I have adopted Adobe RGB as my RGB working space, because it has a larger color
gamut that is particularly suited for RGB to CMYK color conversions.

Figure 4.10 The CD-ROM accompanying the

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers book con-
tains a short movie which helps to explain the RGB
space issue by graphically comparing some of the
main RGB spaces.

The ideal RGB working space

If you select an RGB work space which is the same size as the monitor space, you
are not using Photoshop to its full potential and more importantly you are probably
clipping parts of the CMYK gamut. Select too wide a space, like Wide Gamut RGB,
and there will be large gaps in color tone between one data point and the next, as
each color channel can only represent up to 256 data points. Although you can safely
use a wide gamut space as long as you are editing in 16 bits per channel mode. But
for 24-bit image editing I advise you don’t use anything larger than Adobe RGB.

Figure 4.11 A CMYK color space is mostly

smaller than the monitor RGB color space. Not
all CMYK colors can be displayed accurately due
to the physical display limitations of the average
computer monitor. This screen shot shows a
continuous spectrum going through shades of
cyan, magenta and yellow. The image was then
deliberately posterized in Photoshop. Notice how
the posterized steps grow wider in the Yellow
and Cyan portions of the spectrum. This sample
gradient pinpoints the areas of the CMYK spec-
trum which fall outside the gamut of a typical
RGB monitor.

21