Colormanagement primer Part 5: Now What?

On a basic level colormanagement isn't all that complicated and by now you should know what's what. Unfortunately, making it work can be quite complicated. It involves many details and setting the right preferences of a lot of hard- and software. But at least you should be able to make more sense of your manuals by now.
You should be aware that the scope of color management is way beyond your own desktop. Not only your own system will benefit. Colormanagement will help you to communicate with others. ICC has set open standards that are widely used. As a result, other systems will be able to reproduce your colors accurately, provided all parties involved have a color managed system. It is possible to produce an image in one location and have it printed in the right colors 2000 miles away. Think about it: being able to accurately reproduce your colors anywhere anytime will give you a great advantage and will rule out a lot of unwelcome discussion.

Here are some recommendations:

If you are a design professional, see to it that your system is color managed. At the end of the day it will save you a lot of time, annoyance and money. If you don't have the time or patience to do it yourself, hire a colormanagement professional. It will be worth it.
Calibrize may help you on your way but you'll probably need a higher end hardware calibration utility. However, Calibrize will enable you to dabble in colormanagement with no strings attached.

If you are a serious or professional photographer you also need to see to it that your system is color managed. While a camera profile has limited use, it may still be important. But color managing the rest of your system is crucial. If you deliver photos to clients, a color managed workflow will make your life considerably easier. Calibrize may help you on your way but you'll probably need a higher end hardware calibration utility.

If you are a business person who is on the road with a laptop and Powerpoint, you better download Calibrize and start using it. It will make you very happy. You can even use it to make a temporary profile for a beamer. It only takes a few seconds, but your audience will see your pie charts much clearer.

For anything else you might be doing on your computer, by all means use Calibrize. At the very least it will get you much more value for money from your monitor.
In any case, if you would like to further your knowledge and look up real world colormanagement solutions it is recommended to purchase a book such as Real World Color Management.

We hope you enjoyed these pages. We do appreciate feedback. Please send your comments to 'calibrize-at-colorjinn-dot-com'

Previous:
Introduction
Traveling into Color Space
Converting Colors
Calibrating

Calibrize's Color Management Primer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License.