<----BACK

-----What color management claims to provide is an overall system that will (more or less) safeguard each image’s color content as it makes its way down the digital production line. At each stage in the production line this system would remap the image’s color gamut so as to retain and display its essential integrity.

Color Management Basics
-----Keeping it simple… color management means making a picture appear essentially the same every time it is seen… on computer monitors and in print. color printers or fresh off the press. Before the advent of desktop publishing, the process of color management was maintained by a small group of highly educated color scientists and very experienced color separators.
-----Unfortunately, there are few of those “trade shops” that have survived the desktop publishing transition. Many of the craftsmen of the established engraving trade became casualties of the desktop revolution.

-----Also unfortunate, little of their trade was actually passed to the new electronic publishing system. While it is a fact that those who desire to produce accurate color files for print should possess a significant understanding of how color separations work,
it is unfortunate that few desktop publishers actually do. -----

-----This same level of color savvy intelligence that was once provided by color separators and photo engravers should be understood by today's electronic publishers. These photo engravers provided the printing industry with the magic. Separators and engravers were the precision color and fidelity guardians of the printing trade.
-----This may be new news to some, but most of the country’s printers rarely ever produced their own color separations. When the printer accepted the job, he always called his engraver to come pick up the color work. Color separation houses produced the separations and delivered film, proofs, and sometimes even plates to the printer.
-----The engraver was privy to each printing company’s printing equipment and paper stocks, and separated each picture accordingly. The engraver was told the paper that would be printed on, the press on which

the job would run, and the screen ruling (lpi) that would be used. On the wall behind every drum scanner I ever operated was a brief “profile” of each printing company’s separation preferences. We adjusted our scanners accordingly and the magic happened for each project.
-----What desktop publishing has removed from the printing process is the engraver’s touch. What the printing industry must now do is embrace the science of color management. This system of developing device profiles holds the key to reclaiming the ground once occupied by the experienced engraver.
-----This job must be addressed by those who have a solid understanding of ink on paper. It is the responsibility of the printing community to develop these profiles and then pass them along to their clients.
-----ICC profiles, used properly and knowledgeably, can provide this service. Let’s take a brief look at what profiles can do to fill this gap.

On a related issue go to ICC Profiles