Colour Management Primer

Colour Management is essential for high quality printing.

You cannot avoid using colour management.
It is now an integral part of the printing industry and if anyone tells you that you can just ignore it they are pulling your leg!

Click here to see what might happen!

It affects everything that gets printed, even if only when viewing on screen in the case of spot colour jobs.

The Colour Challenge
RGB vs CMYK Additive and subtractive colours	Process colour was invented over 100 years ago as a method of creating acceptable 'full colour' from 3 primary colours and black. (CMYK, cyan-magenta-yellow and black, K stands for Key or black. In the old days, the black was printed first to provide a registration key for the other colours) The problem with cmy is that when they are mixed, they make black or shades of grey. This is why you can't print the same colours you see in a transparency or monitor, they are comprised of red, green and blue light, which makes white when mixed in equal proportions. These are known as Additive and Subtractive Primaries respectively.
There seems to be a lot of bad colour management going around....so what colour ARE the sunflowers anyhow?!? The Postcard Analogy.... A layman's explanation of colour management - there are many who will consider this an oversimplification, but hey.....you have to start somewhere.	Don't feel bad if you don't understand colour management, ...you are not alone! Let me preface this by saying that I am not a colour management expert, but because colour management is so difficult to implement and to learn from scratch, I am sharing my understanding for what it is worth. I am using colour management successfully on a daily basis in an average printshop. What is not average though, is the commitment of staff here to adhere firmly to the principles of colour management in a production environment, which is not easy, every person is involved or the whole process will not work. The best way I have found to explain the process is by analogy: The Postcard Analogy. Each file that arrives at our factory can be imagined to be a postcard from some foreign land. It might be written in korean or it may be in cantonese, but unless you speak 300 languages you would not know which translation dictionary to pull out. Ah-ha, look at the postmark! It has 'beijing' on it, so we will start with cantonese as the source language.... Now imagine you could find all the characters and translate cantonese into english, and you would get a good translation of the meaning of the message. So now imagine that a tiff file is a postcard and the colour profile saved with it is the postmark. This profile defines the origin of the colour space ( the language) within the file and allows our software to translate the information into our native colour space. That is the basis of colour management. The same translation happens many times in the active life of that file.... When the file is accessed by the layout application (InDesign colour management on) When colour adjustments or corrections are made in Photoshop (Photoshop CMS on) Output to PDF for imposition (InDesign export settings) Ripping file for proofing (Proofer colour management on) Ripping the file for platemaking (Platesetter colour management on) Press density settings (to industry colour management standards) Each application that accesses the file has a native colour space or language that it uses. Destination Profiles: I am not really up on this, so if someone wants to suggest a more correct explanation here, I would be grateful, but as I understand it...... If you are outputting files to a non colour-managed proofing device you can output your file to a destination profile that provides a 'prediction' profile for the device based on a measured output test. In our shop, we use our press profile as our working space in all applications and we convert from the clients embedded profile to our own. Monitor profiles are vital too as is correct monitor calibration.
Part 2.....missing profiles	If a file is saved without a colour profile, it is like the postcard without a postmark....you might guess the right one, but its hard to pick spanish from portugese....best to call the originator and ask them what the correct working space would be. If they say they don't know, you had better encourage them to learn about colour management too! Then maybe next time, they will embed a profile and you will both be much wiser.
Part 3.......what next Click here to see how different profiles affect a colourful image.... Click here for a graphical example of colour spaces and how they compare when graphed in 3D... (These pages open in a separate window, just close them when finished)	To start colour managing at the beginning: Open InDesign colour management settings and choose 'US prepress defaults' until you are in a position to choose any different. Keep your (Adobe) applications 'synchronised' (look it up). When you see a message that there is a choice to be made when opening a file, always respect a profile if it is there. If no profile, you will call the originator or go fishing for it (see below) Promise yourself that you will never 'ignore colour management' because it is not really possible, you are just passing the buck. (Actually, a lot of bucks! and they may well be your own!) Join the adobe forums http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.ee6b330/
Fishing for profiles	In the unhappy situation that no profile is embedded and the originator is no use, you might have to go fishing for the best option in a bad place. Open the file and 'assign' a possible profile. If you are doing this in photoshop, you will then see the file as it may or may not be and you can decide to 'rebirth' the file by then saving with that applied profile, so you are adding your own postmark.

The Colour Challenge

RGB vs CMYK

Additive and subtractive colours

Process colour was invented over 100 years ago as a method of creating acceptable 'full colour' from 3 primary colours and black. (CMYK, cyan-magenta-yellow and black, K stands for Key or black. In the old days, the black was printed first to provide a registration key for the other colours)

The problem with cmy is that when they are mixed, they make black or shades of grey. This is why you can't print the same colours you see in a transparency or monitor, they are comprised of red, green and blue light, which makes white when mixed in equal proportions. These are known as Additive and Subtractive Primaries respectively.

sunflowers

There seems to be a lot of bad colour management going around....so what colour ARE the sunflowers anyhow?!?

The Postcard Analogy....

A layman's explanation of colour management - there are many who will consider this an oversimplification, but hey.....you have to start somewhere.

Don't feel bad if you don't understand colour management, ...you are not alone!

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a colour management expert, but because colour management is so difficult to implement and to learn from scratch, I am sharing my understanding for what it is worth.

I am using colour management successfully on a daily basis in an average printshop. What is not average though, is the commitment of staff here to adhere firmly to the principles of colour management in a production environment, which is not easy, every person is involved or the whole process will not work.

The best way I have found to explain the process is by analogy:

The Postcard Analogy.

Each file that arrives at our factory can be imagined to be a postcard from some foreign land.

It might be written in korean or it may be in cantonese, but unless you speak 300 languages you would not know which translation dictionary to pull out.

Ah-ha, look at the postmark! It has 'beijing' on it, so we will start with cantonese as the source language....

Now imagine you could find all the characters and translate cantonese into english, and you would get a good translation of the meaning of the message.

So now imagine that a tiff file is a postcard and the colour profile saved with it is the postmark. This profile defines the origin of the colour space ( the language) within the file and allows our software to translate the information into our native colour space.

That is the basis of colour management.

The same translation happens many times in the active life of that file....

When the file is accessed by the layout application (InDesign colour management on)
When colour adjustments or corrections are made in Photoshop (Photoshop CMS on)
Output to PDF for imposition (InDesign export settings)
Ripping file for proofing (Proofer colour management on)
Ripping the file for platemaking (Platesetter colour management on)
Press density settings (to industry colour management standards)

Each application that accesses the file has a native colour space or language that it uses.

Destination Profiles: I am not really up on this, so if someone wants to suggest a more correct explanation here, I would be grateful, but as I understand it......

If you are outputting files to a non colour-managed proofing device you can output your file to a destination profile that provides a 'prediction' profile for the device based on a measured output test. In our shop, we use our press profile as our working space in all applications and we convert from the clients embedded profile to our own.

Monitor profiles are vital too as is correct monitor calibration.

Part 2.....missing profiles

If a file is saved without a colour profile, it is like the postcard without a postmark....you might guess the right one, but its hard to pick spanish from portugese....best to call the originator and ask them what the correct working space would be. If they say they don't know, you had better encourage them to learn about colour management too! Then maybe next time, they will embed a profile and you will both be much wiser.

Part 3.......what next

Click here to see how different profiles affect a colourful image....

Click here for a graphical example of colour spaces and how they compare when graphed in 3D...

(These pages open in a separate window, just close them when finished)

To start colour managing at the beginning:

Open InDesign colour management settings and choose 'US prepress defaults' until you are in a position to choose any different.
Keep your (Adobe) applications 'synchronised' (look it up).
When you see a message that there is a choice to be made when opening a file, always respect a profile if it is there.
If no profile, you will call the originator or go fishing for it (see below)
Promise yourself that you will never 'ignore colour management' because it is not really possible, you are just passing the buck. (Actually, a lot of bucks! and they may well be your own!)
Join the adobe forums http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.ee6b330/

Fishing for profiles

In the unhappy situation that no profile is embedded and the originator is no use, you might have to go fishing for the best option in a bad place.

Open the file and 'assign' a possible profile. If you are doing this in photoshop, you will then see the file as it may or may not be and you can decide to 'rebirth' the file by then saving with that applied profile, so you are adding your own postmark.