Photoshop and Color Management - Color Management for Photographers - page 66

Sidebar
ColorSync Workflow: One .csf setting, available only on the Macintosh versions of Photo-
shop, is named ColorSync Workflow . This setting accesses the various preferences in the Col-
orSync utilities (see Chapter 8 for more information about the ColorSync Utility). Within
ColorSync, users can select preferred profiles for input, output, and proofing devices, with the
display profile accessed from the Monitors System Preferences. When a user picks the Color-
Sync Workflow in the color settings, Photoshop will use the profiles specified inside the Color-
Sync control panel under OS9 or the ColorSync utility under OS X. This is one of the few
applications that accesses this data directly from ColorSync. The idea here is that users can
create one central depository for settings on a system level. Applications will go to this depos-
itory and utilize the ICC profiles selected.
ColorSync allows users to create and save any number of ColorSync Workflows. If a user
sets his or her color preferences in Photoshop to ColorSync Workflow, he or she should under-
stand that these profiles are being accessed directly from ColorSync. Adobe is one of the few
companies to implement the idea of allowing multiple Adobe applications to use a single loca-
tion for color profile settings. If a user has multiple applications like InDesign, Illustrator, and
Photoshop all set to use ColorSync Workflow, then a single change in the ColorSync utility will
then update all the applications color settings. At this point in time, this is an advanced setting
that few are using since few applications actually go out and find these settings. In addition,
some users may have good reason to have different color settings in different applications. If,
however, your work flow is such that you want all your Adobe applications to have the same
color settings and you're working on a Macintosh, this setting might be worth considering. In
Photoshop CS2, we can produce the same behavior among Adobe applications using Bridge.
Section 2: Working Spaces
The second section is labeled Working Spaces . Here the pop-up menus
allow users to pick what I like to call the preferred RGB, CMYK, Grayscale,
and Spot working space defaults. This setting comes into play in only a
few situations, the most important being what color space Photoshop
assumes for documents without embedded profiles. I've discussed the
various RGB working spaces available. Here is where you pick the one
that you wish to use, again as the preferred working space for editing
documents. In Photoshop CS and CS2, we can create a new document
based upon any color profile available using the New document dialog
seen in Fig. 2-4. Therefore, this selection of a working space plays a far
lesser role than in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and 7.0. In those versions, what-
ever working space was selected in the color settings would be used
whenever a new document was created.
RGB Referring back to Fig. 2-3, using the pop-up menu, I've picked
Adobe RGB (1998) as my preferred working space for my color setting.
I've told Photoshop that I prefer to be dealing with RGB documents in
Adobe RGB (1998), and to assume all documents without embedded pro-
files are in Adobe RGB (1998). If I click the pop-up menu where I've