Cover image by S.Hansen
Whether you are designing for print or for the web, making the leap from what you see on your computer screen to the outside world can be a tricky process, fraught with unpredictable changes and unexpected results. The web is full of information regarding color management and sifting through it can be very overwhelming. Contradictory opinions abound and it can be difficult to find reliable sources of information.
Over the last few months, Scott and I have been researching this topic extensively. With the addition of the new Epson 9900 to the studio, we wanted to be sure that our printer workflow was optimized and producing a consistent output. With the help of Kirk Economos of Meridian Cyber Solutions, we have implemented a color management system that works for us. Below we have tried to aggregate this knowledge into a simple and useful guide, designed to help you ensure your studio is set up correctly. It is not intended to be the end-all article on color management by any means — but it’s a good place to start if color management isn’t something you have previously implemented or considered.
Continue reading →
Those who have been following along will know that we’ve been talking about doing a color management guide for a while now. Well, it’s finally done and should go up early tomorrow morning. I’ve always been annoyed that there really aren’t any consolidated, plain-english resources out there for getting your head around color management so after talking with Alex, we thought it was time to put our own together. Over the past couple years I’ve begun to focus more and more on proper color management in my workflow and with the recent addition of the Epson 9900 it’s become even more important. After Alex and I worked through the the process of getting the 9900 online I figured it was finally time to put all that we had learned into a post as a reference point for others who are struggling with maintaining color integrity in their work.
We put this guide together because whether you are designing for print or web, it is important to have a good understanding of color management to ensure that your image looks the way you intended it once it leaves the confines of your computer. After considering the many factors that go into this process, Alex has written a comprehensive guide to color managing your documents from concept to finished product. We certainly aren’t billing this as the definitive manual for color management; it’s intended to be a working guide, a condensed set of essentials based on our own experiences working with various printing companies and our own equipment over the years. To help with the finer points, we enlisted color expert Kirk Economos of Meridian Cyber who has helped edit the guide to make sure everything is correct and in line with accepted industry practice.
So stay tuned, you should see the guide pop up here shortly.
