42
The Showfoto Handbook
3.2.1 Introduction
The point of a color-managed workflow is to ensure that the colors coming from your camera or
scanner have a predictable relationship with the colors you actually photographed or scanned,
that the colors displayed on your monitor match the colors coming from your camera or scanner,
and that the colors you print or display on the web match the colorsyou produced inyour digital
darkroom.
3.2.1.1 Which buttons do I push?
When it comes to color management, everyone wants to know, ´´which buttons do I push to get
the results I want´´. Unfortunately, color management of necessity involves making informed
choices at every step along the image-processing workflow. The purpose of this tutorial is to
provide sufficient background information on color management, along with links to more in-
depth information, to enable you to begin to make your own informed decisions, based on your
own desired results.
3.2.1.2 Is there anyone who doesn’t need to worry about color management?
If your imaging workflow meets all six criteria listed below, then you don’t need to worry about
color management.
1. you are working at a monitor properly calibrated to the sRGB color space (more about that
below)
2. your imaging workflow starts with an in-camera-produced jpeg already in the sRGB color
space
3. you work exclusively in the sRGB color space for editing
4. your printer wants images in the sRGB color space
5. your scanner produces images in the sRGB color space
6. your only other image output is via email or the web, where sRGB isthe de facto standard
3.2.2 The sRGB color space
3.2.2.1 What is so special about the sRGB color space?
sRGB is widely accepted as a standard color profile by virtually everyone involved with
consumer-oriented imaging. sRGB was proposed in 1996 by Hewlett Packard and Microsoft
asa standardized color space for consumer-oriented applications. As stated in the initial HP/MS
proposal:
Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft propose the addition of support for a standard color
space, sRGB, within the Microsoft operating systems, HP products, the Internet, and
all other interested vendors. The aim of this color space is to complement the current
color management strategiesby enabling athird method of handling color in the oper-
ating systems, device drivers and the Internet that utilizes a simple and robust device
independent color definition. This will provide good quality and backward com-
patibility with minimum transmission and system overhead. Based on a calibrated
colorimetric RGB color space well suited to Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitors, televi-
sion, scanners, digital cameras, and printing systems, such a space can be supported
with minimum cost to software and hardware vendors...
110
