Photoshop® CS5 Bible

Chapter 29. Printing and Color Management

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding color management

• Embedding color profiles in images

• Color calibrating devices

• Configuring color management in Photoshop

• Hard and soft proofing images for different devices

• Using color management to print accurate colors

• Adding crop marks when printing images

Color is one of the most important aspects in digital images. In fact, the look of most images is completely dependent upon the color composition. Unfortunately, color is not consistent as you move from device to device, so it is difficult to guarantee that the color corrections you make on one computer will match what you see on another or when the image is printed out.

Color management solves these problems by assigning color profiles that describe the colors in a device and then using those profiles to convert the image data as it is transferred from device to device. This chapter discusses color management and how Photoshop uses it to ensure the colors in your images are consistent as they are transferred to other devices and printed.

Importance of Color Accuracy and Consistency

Few things are more frustrating that spending hours editing an image only to find out that the finished product looks terrible when you print it. Differences in monitor quality and even just the age difference between two monitors can result in severe variations in color in images. Additionally, differences in printers, ink, and paper also result in a high variance of color output. A good ...