Color: Plain and Simple:

 That was to be the name of this article but, there is nothing “plain and simple” about good color. From the questions I have been asked over the years it still appears that most trade schools and colleges do not cover this subject to the full extent necessary.

Recently, I attended a: trade show” for the print industry. I met professionals and students, on the cutting edge, of design and graphic arts. The most common questions I fielded were them asking “what is and why do I need to worry about color management?”

Having started my career in 1965 I was amazed how little seems to be taught, these days, to address one of the major workflow concerns of the twenty-first century. What is happening to and in the Graphic Arts Curriculum of most colleges, universities and trade schools? Surely, someone must realize that with the advent of the computer into the printing arena, the necessity of “total control via electronic fingerprinting” is necessary for quality and consistency.

Let us assume you are an artist and you provide images  and/or designs to a publisher/printer. Your skills and talent are your life. If everyone could create what your mind can, for a given subject or product, you would be jobless. That said, if your images do not print properly you still may become jobless. This said it is your responsibility to get the images in your mind’s eye onto a monitor and further into print. In all reality it should be “what you see is what you get” and in theory this is a very true expectation.

How?

First of all you need to have a realization of color. Most of us see in LAB colorspace. That is to say we can perceive most all colors from but not including ultraviolet to infrared. The monitors and digital cameras present RGB images to you. Presses use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black (CMYK) inks, with the only exception being a “special 5^th color plate” of a custom mixed separate ink. And, everything we work with is subject to light.

If you see a problem here you are to be commended. Some people do and more don’t. I have heard for too many times over the years, an artist or designer say; “that does not look anything like the image I sent you.” “Why, on my monitor it looked so much ________.” You can fill in the blank with: richer, darker, contrasted, saturated, colorful, and any more of a vast number of adjectives.

Why?

Well, let’s see. Different colorspaces is probably the largest factor. That, and the change of “How light is used in differing colorspaces”.  LAB, the presence of all visible colors contains the RGB and CMYK areas. Some of the RGB cannot be reached by CMYK and some of the CMYK cannot be seen with RGB. Rgb color space relies upon light to present it to your eyes, as in spotlights or monitor screens. CMYK relies upon light bouncing off of a surface and using the colors of CMYK as “filters” to present a color to your eye. Obviously a transmitted light is brighter and probably purer that a reflected light, thus many differences can be noted with only that factor to consider.

What can control these differences?

Here is where the plain and simple comes in. It is plane to most that the light usage is different between a printed piece and a monitor full of images. Now, here is the simple part. You simply need a series of “profiles”, electronic files that create a link between “what you see and what you get”.

This concept is best understood by my favorite analogy:

“You have worked hard and through your hard work and much labor have come up with the perfect plan for world peace. You have been asked to present your findings a United Nations by the General Assembly. The day you arrive to the Assembly room you are escorted to the podium. There in front of the world you present you findings.

After the presentation you are given some recognition for your hard work and you leave. The very next day the world is at total peace.” Now, here is color management at its finest. Your words and Ideas were transferred to many foreign ears and ideologies via interpreters. Not only did they translate your words but the concept too. That is what color management through ICC profiles does.

The results:

Through the use of ICC profiles an image, viewed in the sunlight, is transferred into an RGB digital camera file, sent to a computer, viewed on an RGB monitor, and then printed on a four-color press. The path is similar to this: The “raw” RGB file from the camera is taken into Photoshop in the “known” RGB colorspace, adobe1998, and the monitor, having been “profiled” with a colorimeter is able to present that image to you in the known color space. You are able to convert the RGB file into a CMYK colorspace in Photoshop. By making a copy of the file in CMYK you may now open the RGB file and the CMYK file, side-by-side and by applying your “press” profile to the CMYK image you can then use Photoshop tools to make the CMYK image match, closely, the RGB file on your monitor.

Next you would send the CMYK image to print.

What I have just presented to you is the result of many years of hard labor by the Commission Internationale’ de l’Eclairage or CIE, and the makers of Colorsync and the theory of the ICC profile.