Color Management

Color management is the language that helps all of your devices talk to each other about color. Your scanner might scan your artwork with certain color settings. Your monitor will display colors in its own way. Your printer will use its own settings when applying ink. Moving color information across different devices and keeping them accurate is what color management is about.

This is important for us to know because our documents are created with color information. If we don’t understand what is being saved, it can make it difficult when sending it to a printer. The colors might also appear differently if we send it to another application.

To keep your colors the same across devices, an organization was created called the International Color Consortium (ICC). They created a measuring stick by which all devices try to follow for color management. Not only does this standard specify how a color should look, but how colors are converted to different formats. This whole process is referred to as a Color Management System.