Why do my images look different on the web? Why do they look different when I print them?

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Have you ever noticed that none of the TVs on the wall of TVs at Best Buy show color the same? Well if they lined up computer monitors and showed the same image, you'd see the same thing. No two alike.

Although broadcasters make sure the images they send out meet strict international color standards, they have no control over the way the image is displayed, and there is no way for viewers to calibrate their sets with the broadcaster's images. Fortunately the computer world has a solution to the problem, and it is called color management.

Color management is a big issue if you are selling things like shirts and skirts on the web or in a printed catalog. Color management is also necessary if you are producing pages for books or magazines. It is especially important if you sell paint or ink. Retailers report that one of the most frequent reasons for returns is because a product's actual color was different than what was expected. The need for color accuracy is especially important to photographers and artists. Because color conveys emotions and messages, we work hard to get them right.

Not only are computer monitors different, digital cameras, scanners, and printers are different. They are different from each other, and they can even be different from themselves over time! A monitor's colors can shift as the phosphors in the screen age, images captured by a scanner can change with the aging of the bulb, and different papers, inks, and toners can change the look of the print. In fact, two monitors made by the same manufacturer can be slightly different.

To further complicate matters, each device has a different color gamut meaning its ability to capture or display a range of colors varies. For example, monitors usually cannot display all the colors captured by a digital camera. Things get really sticky when you consider that monitors display colors by mixing tiny dots (pixels) of red, green and blue (RGB) while printers create colors by mixing cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK).

Another important factor is the resolution of the display. Computer monitors typically use 72-96 dots per inch (dpi), newspaper pictures are about the same, glossy magazines typically run from 100 to 300 dpi, and art mags and books can go 300 dpi or higher.

So the way we TRY to manage the process is with color calibration tools and software. The process begins with a system of describing a color with a mathematical formula that includes the three dimensions of color:

> Hue. The name of the color.
> Saturation. The amount of white mixed in a color.
> Value. The amount of black mixed in a color.

Several years ago Apple Computer developed a system called ColorSync that has become an industry standard. ColorSync is a program that describes colors precisely according to international standards, translates RGB to CMYK, and can even adjust for the vagaries of different monitors, scanners, cameras, printers, papers, inks, etc. ColorSync is system-level "digital glue" which allows peripheral devices, the operating system and applications to communicate about color. ColorSync allows you to select International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles for your monitor, scanner, and printer to coordinate the colors so that what you see is what you (and others) get. The ICC sets standards for colors cso they an be measured by a colorimeter or spectrophotometer. As an example, an ICC Profile might say something like this: "to correct the color on this particular Teriyaki 20" monitor, add 10% red, subtract 4% green and darken the blue a bit." Ditto for the scanner and printer profiles.

Then there's the Windows world. You guessed it, colors (and font sizes) are slightly different on Windows machines and instead of adopting the ColorSync standard, Microsoft has created its own system called Image Color Management (ICM).

Although all modern PCs have the ability to use ColorSync or ICM, most folks don't calibrate their monitors. The good news is that the computer makers are working with the web standards team to set up techniques for insuring proper color display.

Info resources

There are several other articles on the topic on this website:

http://www.colormatters.com - Color consultant J. L. Morton's site offers information and message boards on a wide range of topics including psychological and physiological impact of color.

http://www.color.org - The International Color Consortium, established to promote an open, vendor-neutral, cross-platform color management system.

http://www.iscc.org - The Inter-Society Color Council, a professional society.

http://www.colorassociation.com - The Color Association of the United States. They forecast what colors will be popular next!

http://www.colormarketing.org - The Color Marketing Group, a non-profit organization of color designers that forecasts colors for manufactured products. Includes links to trade shows and industry sites organized by field-e.g., fashion, graphics, interiors, etc.