Color Resources

Online references for
Digital Color Management for Photography NPHG0018
2 sessions.Sat., 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., October 15 & 22, 2005
The New School
Photography Department
Instructor: Don Porter
page last updated October 12, 2005

Powerpoint slides for October 15 & 22, 2005

See also: Photoshop References
and Examples

Adobe Technical Guides

The interesting and useful Adobe Technical Guides have been removed from Adobe's website. In their place, there is a solid technical white paper "Color consistency and Adobe Creative Suite":
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/pdfs/cscolormgmt.pdf

Also useful:
Color management terminology - Support Knowledgebase:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320624.html

Color Management: Current Practice and The Adoption of a New Standard
Michael Has, FOGRA ,Technical Secretary, International Color Consortium Todd Newman, Chairman, International Color Consortium
Introduction
Managing Color in the Printing Industry
Managing Color in the Prepress Industry
Managing Color in Motion Pictures
Managing Color in Video
The Need for Open Color Management
The ICC Approach to Color Management
ICC Software Architecture
What's in the ICC Profile Specification ?
Generating an ICC Profile
Color Space Conversion
"Optimum Reproduction"
The mathematics of color transforms
Supporting ICC-based Color Management In a Traditional Workflow
Results
Limitations of Color Management
How Accurate Need We Be?
Summary
10 pages 7000 words
http://www.color.org/wpaper1.html

Color Management – What’s new from the ICC By David McDowell, NPES/EK
The Prepress Bulletin Nov/Dec 2001
Who Is ICC, Color Mgmt, etc.
Some Working Groups
Future Work
Summary of main changes (identify illum leve, chromatic adapt, etc.)
5 pages
http://www.color.org/2001_11_colormanagement.pdf

Information on Profiles Technical overview from the ICC.
4 pages
1. Background
2. Profile connection space (PCS)
3. Rendering intents
3.1 Colorimetric Intents
3.1.1 Media-Relative Colorimetric Intent
3.1.2 ICC-Absolute Colorimetric Intent
3.1.3 Saturation Intent
4.1 Brightness Adaptation and Tone-scale Correction
http://www.color.org/profile.html

ICC Specifications Complete technical specs – multiple versions, all PDF files.
http://www.color.org/icc_specs2.html

ICC Slide Presentation 44 slides – What is ICC, why, future, etc.
http://www.color.org/slidepres.pdf

A Standard Default Color Space for the Internet – sRGB
Michael Stokes (Hewlett-Packard), Matthew Anderson (Microsoft), Srinivasan Chandrasekar (Microsoft), Ricardo Motta (Hewlett-Packard)
Lots of technical details….
http://www.color.org/sRGB.html
See also: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB

Why Color Management? By James C. King, Principal Scientist, Adobe June 2001
Details on rendering intents, nice Adobe slides. 56 slides

Introduction to Color Management
Basics of Conversion
Color workflow issues
Conversion Glitches
A user’s perspective – Some thoughts on a better way

http://www.color.org/slidepres1.pdf

Why Color Management? By James C. King, Principal Scientist, Adobe
White paper form of the 56-slide presentation.
7 pages
http://www.color.org/whycolormanagement.pdf

Color Primer By Fred Bunting
Excellent – HIGHLY recommended
116 pages
http://www.xrite.com/documents/apps/public/misc/Color_Primer_by_Fred_Bunting.pdf

The Color Guide and Glossary
By Xrite
Excellent – slicker, more commercial (but less detailed) version of Bunting’s Primer
52 pages
1. Color Communication
2. Color management and control
3. Glossary
http://www.xrite.com/documents/literature/en/L11-029_color_guide_en.pdf

Color Management Workflow Analysis Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark
Pp18-19 contain a good description of the New York Times workflow
24 pages
http://www.color.org/sorenwinslow.pdf

Articles by Don Hutcheson http://www.hutchcolor.com/CMS_notes.html
Principles of Color Management Good quick overview with nice graphics. Downside: emphasis on CMYK press output.
6 pages
Successful soft proofing – Making your monitor really match the proof 2 pages

Spreadsheets and other tools by Don Hutcheson
http://www.hutchcolor.com/Free_stuff.html
Hutch Color Space Visualizer Excel doc that automates comparisons of common RGB spaces
Color Management By Donald P. D’Amato, Mitretek
6 page overview
http://www.mitretek.org/pubs/mitretek-summaries_summer/Sigma_Pubs/Color_Management.pdf

Eye-One Color Cook Book Elaborate overview w very impressive graphics
64 pages -- now removed from the Apple website.

Lindbloom’s Calculators & Viewers By Bruce Lindbloom
Java applet that displays Hue,Value,Chroma from Munsell in any of 3 spaces: xyY, Lab, or Luv. http://www.brucelindbloom.com/index.html (then choose the Color button and then Munsell Display Calc). Also: CIE Color Calculator, RGB values in a number of color spaces for the Gretag-Macbeth 24 color ColorChecker chart. Also: java applet for viewing the Lab gamut in 3D – along with a QT animation. And calculator to see how many levels RGB->Lab conversion costs in various RGB color spaces.
Lindbloom Profile Evaluation Images Lab TIF files with instructions for printing or viewing (absolute colorimetric) then measuring to see exactly how far off the profile is at any of 11 charts, 625 colors each.
http://www.brucelindbloom.com/

ColorSync Technology Brief (White Paper)
30 pages Oriented to prepress. Brings in AppleScript with ColorSync.
The Basics of Color Systems and Color Management ColorSync Training Course
Apple has removed both these documents from their website. Instead there is a superficial one page summary of ColorSync at: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/colorsync/

X-Rite Understanding Illuminants doc
Goes through the standard illuminants (accompanying doc Ca00001a.pdf lists them), and explains how they work, with examples. 10 pages.
http://www.xrite.com/documents/apps/public/whitepapers/Ca00002a.pdf

The Darkroom Makes a Comeback By George Wedding
Two part article making the case for a tightly controlled low light environment for your "digital darkroom" to get colors right when viewing on your monitor, soft-proofing, etc.
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/11791.html

Modifying Printer Profiles By Powell Hargrave
How to tweak (Photoshop Layers) the scanned images to get better profiles (warning: risky).
http://members.shaw.ca/hargravep/profile.htm

Comparative Review of Profilers (scanner, monitor, printer)
Western Michigan University
Abhay Sharma and Paul d. Fleming
Appears pretty professional and scientific. However, the audience may be more pre-press and less photographic. And the bias is very much high-end. Furthermore, there is reason for considerable doubt about the viability of such testing.
Still, it is interesting to see that the winners for printer profiling in 2001 were:
FujiFilm ColourKit 2.3, GretagMacbeth ProfileMaker 4.0, Monaco Profiler 4, and Heidelberg PrintOpen 4.0.5
… and in 2002 were:
FujiFilm ColourKit 3.0.4, ICS basICColor 1.5, Monaco Profiler 4.5, GretagMacbeth Eye-One Match 1.1, GretagMacbeth ProfileMaker 4.1, Monaco EZColor 2.5.1
Summary at:
http://www.wmich.edu/ppse/staff/downloads/index.html (must register to download)

ColorVision tutorial
Select "Learning" and either "Color Management" (1 page) or "What is Color?" (12 pages)
http://www.colorvision.com/learn_color.shtml

The Joy of Visual Perception
By Peter Kaiser at York Univ in Canada
Extensive online “book” all about the physics and physiology of vision
http://www.yorku.ca/eye/toc-sub.htm

Norm Koren
Extensive site, good technical depth. Excellent details on scanning, sharpness, color, etc. See especially the details on MTF if you want to understand sharpness better. A bit idiosyncratic: he insists on Picture Window Pro instead of Photoshop.
http://www.normankoren.com/index.html#Tutorials

Phil Green
Web pages that go with the big expensive book “Understanding Digital Color”, from the GATF publishing house. GATF=Graphic Arts Technical Foundation
http://www.digitalcolour.org/understanding/

Charles Poynton
Techie, engineering info about color, especially for video display purposes. Very technical, but very reliable.
Charles writes: I am an independent contractor specializing in the physics, mathematics, and engineering of digital color imaging systems, including digital video, HDTV, and digital cinema (D-cinema). I do technology forecasting, systems modelling, algorithm development (including digital filter design), color characterization and calibration, and image quality assessment.
The ColorFAQ clarifies aspects of colour specification and image coding that are important to computer graphics, image processing, video, and the transfer of digital images to print. I discuss the mapping from physical spectral power distributions to perceived colour. I outline the CIE system, CIE XYZ, xyY, L*u*v* and L*a*b* color systems, linear and nonlinear R'G'B', Y'CBCR, Y'PBPR, Y'UV, Y'IQ and PhotoYCC, including the standards established by SMPTE, EBU and ITU-R (formerly CCIR). I explain why HLS (HSL) and HSI are useless for the specification of accurate color. I give a brief introduction to the CMY system used in photography and CMYK system used in printing.
Gamma FAQ: In video, computer graphics and image processing, gamma represents a numerical parameter that describes the nonlinearity of intensity reproduction. Having a good understanding of the theory and practice of gamma will enable you to get good results when you create, process and display pictures.
http://www.poynton.com

Whiteness
This page is dedicated exclusively to the phenomenon of whiteness as perceived by the human eye. It is organized in such a way that users with different interests and areas of application can find information about theory and practical applications.Your host, Claudio Puebla
http://mitglied.lycos.de/whiteness/

Technical Advisory Service for Images (UK)
TASI :: Advice | Creating Digital Images | Colour management
http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/creating/colour.html

Munsell Color System
System created in 1905 by Albert H. Munsell. Gretag-Macbeth markets several products that use the Munsell system. This is a link to a free color conversion application for Windows:
http://www.gretagmacbeth.com/products_munsell-conversion_sw

A Standard Default Color Space for the Internet - sRGB
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB.html