Color Management Primer: Getting Ultimate Color from your Photos

Getting the color you want out of your digital images can be a confusing and frustrating experience. For most of us the best way to achieve this goal is through a color managed workflow, from camera to print. In this article we'll give you the basics you need to start getting better color. We'll be supplementing this information with specific examples and How-to notes.

First, it is often said that you can't have a real ICC (International Color Consortium) compatible color managed workflow on Windows. That's not true. It is true that there isn't much information on how to do it--even Microsoft's own Digital Photography site is silent on the subject--but the information we provide here will help you get started, and we'll be posting additional tips over the coming weeks on nikondigital.org.

Color-Management

Color management simply means having a set of devices, profiles and software tools which help ensure that as your images move from their initial digitization (by camera, scanner or provided to you on CD) through viewing and proofing, and then onto their final use (as prints or electronic images) they have the colors you intend. In some cases that means making sure the colors are "accurate" and in other cases you'll want to have colors which are "bigger than life". Both can be achieved through a color-managed workflow.

This added hassle is necessary because every device represents color differently. An RGB value from your camera doesn't look the same on your monitor, and in turn will look a third way when it comes off your printer. Each device has a different color gamut that it can represent, and even within that gamut each device has slightly different characteristics in terms of how it displays those colors. So if you want to have accurate color from start to finish you need to have a color-managed workflow that maps your original colors to the equivalent colors as you process your image into its final form. The primary type of color-managed workflow is one that is compatible with the standards provided by the International Color Consortium (ICC).

Do you need Color Management?

Are you having trouble getting your prints to look the way your images look on screen? Are your images coming out of your camera or scanner looking flat and lifeless--requiring extensive use of Photoshop Curves or Levels to turn them into what you expected? Do you send your images off to be printed and experience disappointment when you get them back and they don't match your expectations?

Well, the problem may be in your images themselves, but if you're fairly certain that you've got some winner images but have to spend too much time tweaking the colors to get them to print the way you want them, you need a color-managed workflow. Full-scale color management isn't for the faint of heart, but the results are often stunning--plus you'll save back the time you spent and more by being able to get your images right with less effort.

A Color-managed workflow

ICC-compatible workflows use ICC-compatible profiles and a color management module (software) to provide an industry standard way to work with color. Both Apple and Microsoft provide ICC compatible software engines in their operating systems--Apple calls theirs ColorSync and Microsoft calls theirs ICM2.0.

In addition to a color management module you'll need profiles for your camera and/or scanner, as well as your monitor and printer(s). Plus, you need to use image management and image editing software which fully supports Microsoft's ICM2.0 or Apple's ColorSync. Let's look at each piece in turn.

ICC Profiles

ICC device profiles (usually .ICM files in Windows, tucked away in a Color folder under your System folder) describe how a specific device displays or records color. Typically they include information about which colors the device can display and what actual device independent colors specific RGB values translate into. With an accurate ICC profile for two devices, ICM2.0 or ColorSync can quickly convert an image from one device to another. So if you have good profiles for your camera and/or scanner, monitor and printer, you have the ingredients for accurately viewing and printing your digital images.

Monitor Profiles

Every monitor is slightly different in the way it displays colors. Calibrating your monitor and creating an ICC profile for it will allow you to see colors accurately. When coupled with printer profiles they can even allow you to "soft-proof" what your final printed image will look like.

There are three levels of sophistication when it comes to monitor profiling. First, you can quickly create a profile by eye using simple tools like Colorific ($50) or Adobe Gamma which is bundled with Photoshop. These profiles are better than nothing, but tend to be only an approximation.

To create a much more accurate profile, you can use a hardware "colorimeter" which measures the levels of red, green and blue from your monitor and can be used with special software to create a profile. My personal favorite is EZColor 2.0 from Monaco Systems. When used with their hardware "puck"--MonacoSENSOR--it can be used to calibrate monitors, printers and scanners and does a nice job on all three given the relatively low price of $498 for the bundle. 

The cadillac of monitor profiling solutions use a spectrophotometer to measure not just red, green and blue from the monitor, but actually record the distribution of light emitted over the entire visible spectrum. I've been using the Eye-one Pro from GretagMacbeth and their ProfileMaker 4.0 software. We'll be reviewing the Eye-one and software in more detail on nikondigital.org, but let's just say that if you have the money or a need for critically accurate color, a true spectrophotometer is a real step up from a lower cost colorimeter.

Camera / Scanner Profiles

While profiling your monitor is important to your ability to see the color in your images accurately, it doesn't actually affect the colors in your image. But having a good profile for your camera and/or scanner will. Your camera records colors that are only somewhat like those that our own eye sees. They are translated into RGB values, but unless you have a real profile of the camera or scanner as a device, the RGB you get from the camera won't match the reality of the image you meant to capture.

It's not strictly necessary that you have a custom profile for your camera. Many cameras produce images which are roughly calibrated to an existing standard profile. Some consumer cameras produce sRGB (the Windows default color space) and professional cameras typically offer a choice of sRGB and Adobe RGB. You still need a cooperative application like DigitalPro to do your downloading so that images are correctly tagged, but at least images from these cameras can be expected to have fairly good color right out of the camera.

Scanner profiling tools are sometimes provided by the manufacturer, or can be purchased as part of third party scanner software like Silverfast from LaserSoft.

Unfortunately it is not as easy to find a good, inexpensive camera profiling solution. I have tried several of them and only one really works--Coloreyes from Integrated Color ($359). Coloreyes is currently only available for the Mac, which makes it impractical for many of us, but there are rumors of a Windows version. In the meantime I'll be testing Profilemaker from GretagMacbeth to see if it is an effective alternative for Windows users.

A lower cost alternative are model-specific profiles for cameras. Digital Domain has profiles for about 20 different models.

Printer Profiles

Fortunately, unlike with digital cameras, there are some low cost solutions for profiling your printer. In addition to products like EZColor 2.0 which will allow you to produce custom profiles for your printer, vendors including Epson are providing very good profiles for their printers that you can download from your website. Using a printer profile will provide you with more open shadow areas (instead of allowing them to block up), better overall color fidelity, and often more lifelike fleshtones.

Using your Profiles

Now that you have these profiles, how do you use them? The simplest way to use your monitor and printer profiles is to specify them in the Device properties in your OS. If you generate your profiles using a software package it may do this step for you. Otherwise you'll need to right-click on the profile and choose "Install...". Then you can use the Control Panel to assign the profile to a specific device. On Windows you need to take extra care that any applications you use take advantage of these system profiles to provide color management. If you don't, then Windows will assume that all of your images are sRGB which isn't what you want once you start doing serious work with color.

Application Software: Putting it all together

To put all this together you need to use application software that supports a color managed workflow including ICC profiles. The most important pieces of software in this case are your image management software and your image editing software.

ICC-compliant image management software

Many consumer-oriented image organizers skip color management entirely, which is unfortunate. Instead of putting the work into their software they rely on users to color correct their images by trial and error. However, for those interested in saving time by having the software do the heavy lifting there are solutions. On Windows you can easily achieve this goal by using DigitalPro for Windows as your image management application. On the Macintosh, ...

If you're using DigitalPro it is a simple matter to assign ICC Profiles to your incoming images, then display them color corrected for your particular monitor or even soft-proofed so you can see what they will look like on your printer.

ICC-compliant image editing software

The really good news here is that Photoshop, the most popular image editor on the market, fully supports ICC-profiles and ICC-compliant workflows. If you're serious about image editing there is no question it is the top of the line tool. It can be intimidating to use, so feel free to refer to our tips on One Minute Photoshop.

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