Should Creatives Learn Color Management?
For the past few months I’ve been writing about making color management work — including describing any end-runs we can make around this rather unintuitive process. In response to my last column, in which I described how to soft proof files in Adobe Photoshop, Bob Oswin, President of 5th Ave. Color Printz, wrote: “End users are looking for a definitive set of profiles that can produce a standard range of colors over current output devices. Presses are one of them only. It would not be a stretch for Adobe et al. to form a huddle and come up with the prepress standard, the separation standard, the laser -printer standard, and the ink jet standard. I believe manufacturers would rush to meet such criteria. As it stands, everybody has to become a quasi-expert on imagers, cameras, scanners, monitors, etc. before they can even randomly pick a profile for output.” I can certainly sympathize with this view, but much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon. So
