Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Color Management
One of the industry-defining features of the early Mac and LaserWriter was how the page on the
screen in Aldus PageMaker looked just like the page that came out of the LaserWriter. This consis-
tency spawned the desktop-publishing revolution. Over the years, we've all become used to
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWIG) printing, but setting your computer up so that you get
prints at exactly the right size, layout, and color is still a little complex. The first step is making sure
you have a color-calibrated workflow, and once set up, the next step is setting Aperture's Print
panel to give you the size and layout of images you want. However, if you don't have a printer,
Aperture has a built-in way for you to order high-quality prints. If you really want to go above and
beyond to impress a client (or your grandparents), Aperture also has tools to enable you to build
and order a beautiful, custom book.
Depending on a number of factors, including how old your monitor is, the quality of its internals,
whether sunlight or tungsten bulbs illuminate it, and more, the exact same image file can look
completely different on two different monitors. Furthermore, if you just click the Print button
without doing anything, the resulting print will most likely look completely different than what
you see on your monitor, and if you switch paper types, it will look different still. You might get
lucky and get a print that matches your monitor fairly well, but this will be the exception and not
the rule. Unless you're willing to do a little bit of work to create a color-calibrated workflow, you
will always be playing Russian roulette when you click print.
There are a few reasons for this complexity. One is that your monitor is capable of displaying far
more colors than your printer can print, and you need to help your computer determine the best
way to go from the wider color space your monitor has to the more limited color space that your
printer has. When we talk about a color space, we are talking about a subset of all possible colors
created for some particular reason. For example, sRGB was designed to be a small color space
(meaning it has fewer shades of each color than other color spaces) that looks roughly the same
on all uncalibrated monitors. Adobe RGB 1998 is a color space that Adobe created to contain most
colors that printers can output but that can also be displayed identically on a monitor. Figure 7.1
shows a CIE 1931 diagram (which represents all possible colors) with a triangle indicating the col-
ors in the Adobe RGB 1998 and sRGB color spaces.
The set of colors that a device can reproduce is referred to as the device's
gamut
.
Genius
