Nature Photography Photo Workshop

9.3. COLOR MANAGEMENT

Where asset management allows you to efficiently work with all your files, color management ensures that the color of your photos remains as accurate as possible throughout the workflow. Adopting good color management policies is absolutely essential to the nature photographer.

Figure 9-4. ABOUT THIS PHOTO Image of the Grand Teton range in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (ISO 100, f/22, 1/13 sec. taken with a Tamron 18-200mm XR Di II lens). Some of the keywords I used for this image are Alpine, America, Aspen, Aspens, Autumn, Clouds, Cloudy, Colorado, Fall, Forest, Grass, Grasses, Jackson Hole, Landform, Landscape, Mountain, Mountains, Nature, North America, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Skies, Sky, Tree, Trees, U.S., U.S.A., United States, United States of America, Valley, Vegetation, and Wyoming.

Electronic devices differ in how they deal with color reproduction. Your computer monitor handles color differently than your printer; a projected image will be rendered differently than a print from a photo lab, and so on.

A color management system (CMS) handles color translations between devices. With good color management systems in place you can reasonably expect that what you see on the screen will look similar on a print. Your computer has a CMS built in; on Mac it's called ColorSync and on Windows it's either Image Color Management (ICM) or Windows Color Management (WCM). ...