Color Management has been around in many forms for a long time. In the early days of color reproduction, whether it was photographic or lithographic, it was centered around process control and learned practices. When CEPS (Computer Electronic Prepress Systems) were introduced in the late 1970’s, we found that we had new ways to structure the management of color, although they were processes that were proprietary to each of the systems. Then in 1993, with the advent and increased use of desktop (non-proprietary) design and production systems, eight industry vendors founded the International Color Consortium (ICC). Their goal was to establish a way to match colors across disparate devices, whether they be printers, monitors, capture devices (scanners and cameras), etc. The result was a process utilizing ICC profiles that translates color from different devices with different color spaces to each other through the use of a generic profile connection space (PCS).
As we continue to use digital tools for reproduction, it starts to further move our definition of what reproduction means well beyond color, or what we were looking at in the early stages of digital reproduction for capture, print and display, and even beyond what is addressed in CxF.
The worldwide adoption of the work of the ICC wasn’t as fast as many had hoped for, or as transparent a process as many had envisioned; however, in the end, it really has had a significant impact on the way that we all capture and reproduce color. As we began to settle in with this new standardized way of controlling and translating device color information, we started to realize that there were many other factors that affect how we communicate color information. First of all, we do use on a regular basis ‘special’ (spot) colors that fall outside of the normal ‘process colors’ of CMYK covered in the current ICC processes. And whether those are named colors like those from Pantone, Toyo, DIC, etc., or colors that are selected through spectral measurement, it is important that they all reproduce accurately. But we also have different media characteristics and even viewing conditions that really aren’t addressed through the work of the ICC. So those challenges needed to be addressed.
Cont’d on WhatTheyThink.com
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