Color Management and Why We Need It - Color Management for Photographers - page 27

ICC profiles. The one application that became the industry standard
and moved the adoption of ICC color management along was Adobe
Photoshop version 5.0, which shipped in late 1998.
Color Management versus Color Correction
It is important to look at the differences between color management and
color correction since they are both different and distinct. The basic
premise of color management is to produce what is known as WYSIWYG
(What You See Is What You Get). The goal is to view these images on a
display system, and then ultimately get a match onto some other display
or printed material. Ideally, the print should closely resemble the preview
seen on the computer system so that multiple rounds of printing can be
avoided.
Color correction is the process of altering the numbers to produce a
color appearance that meets the desires of the person editing the file, or
their client's desires. An image may appear too dark or have some kind
of an undesirable colorcast that the user hopes to remove. In order for
this be accomplished, the user has to have faith in the image he or she
sees on screen, or any kind of correction is simply unreliable. Color man-
agement is not color correction! A file with a green cast will produce a
print with a matching green cast if color management is set up correctly.
Without color management, it is impossible to know if the green cast is
due to the file being too green or if the display is incorrect. Color man-
agement and color correction work hand in hand when the user can be
confident that what he or she sees on screen is an accurate representa-
tion of what the numbers in the file truly represent. Going back in time
to the days when all the color was handled by skilled drum scan opera-
tors, having an accurate representation of color on screen wasn't neces-
sary because these operators could work “by the numbers” alone. This
process can work only when the values for a specific output device are
known.
Today, users want to print their images to a number of devices. Unlike
the skilled operators of the past, it is simply not possible to memorize and
know all the correct values for all the devices to which the file may be
destined. As we will see, color management allows users to work numer-
ically and visually, taking advantage of WYSIWYG (see the sidebar,
“WYSIWYG”). This makes color correction much easier, and it also allows
users to get a much better idea of what their files will look like on any
number of output devices. In an upcoming tutorial, we will see that a
properly exposed image appears grossly underexposed if color manage-
ment is not properly set up. It's important to know when you can trust
your display and when you can't due to improper configuration. In some
situations, the desire to “fix” a file using the color correction tools in
Photoshop will be totally counter productive since the problem is the
configuration of the color management system, not the file.