Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Color Settings is off. It's fun being able to fool Photoshop every now and
then.
Notice that next menu item in the list is a heading that begins with
the word
Monitor RGB
, followed by a unique name. That is the name of
the ICC display profile Photoshop is using for previews (Display Using
Monitor Compensation). This is only useful for diagnostic purposes. If for
some reason you want to ensure that Photoshop has found the ICC
profile of your display, here's where to look. Do not select this profile
since it defeats the purpose of using a well-behaved RGB working space
for document editing.
Sidebar
Display Profiles for Working Spaces:
There have been a number of supposed experts that
have recommended that users load their display profile as their RGB working space. This is a
very bad idea. If a user calibrates and profiles his or her display on a regular basis, each profile
is different from the last. As we've seen, the entire idea of an RGB working space is to allow
users to work in a well-behaved, consistent editing environment. Display profiles are highly
device-dependent. Editing in such a color space ensures that our working space is changing
regularly. In addition, a display profile may or may not be well behaved where R
=
G
=
B is neutral.
This would be very unlikely over the entire tonal range of the color space. For this reason, never
load your display profile into the RGB Working Space pop-up menu. If a Lab or consultant ever
advises you to do either, run away from them as fast as you can!
CMYK
The CMYK pop-up menu is where you tell Photoshop what your
preferred CMYK working space should be. The CMYK pop-up menu and
the ICC profiles available here are based upon a CMYK output
print/device. For this reason, the choice of a CMYK space should be
selected based upon the actual printer you intend to send your docu-
ments to for output. The primary difference between this and the RGB
working space is you are specifying the CMYK color space for print. I
mentioned that the profile selected in the RGB working space pop-up is
used as an assumption for all untagged RGB documents. This is true for
CMYK documents as well. Should a user open an untagged CMYK doc-
ument, the CMYK profile selected in this pop-up menu will be used. The
choice of a CMYK profile in this section of the color settings is accessed
elsewhere in Photoshop. First, when a user converts a document to
CMYK using Photoshop's
Image-Mode-CMYK
command, the color space
conversion will use this selected CMYK profile. Another area in Photo-
shop where this CMYK profile is accessed is in the
Proof Setup-Working
CMYK
. Photoshop will use the CMYK profile set in this area for
soft
proofing
, which we also will discuss later in this chapter.
The other options found in the CMYK pop-up menu are similar to
those we discussed with the RGB pop-up menu. There is much more to
the
Custom CMYK
menu, so let's examine that. It's useful to know that an
older method of specifying a CMYK conversion could be configured in
Definition
Soft proof:
The process
of using ICC color
management to produce a
preview of an image on-
screen that simulates
(proofs) how that image
will output to a specific
device.
