<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" xmlns:its="http://www.w3.org/2005/11/its" type="topic" style="question" id="color-whyimportant" xml:lang="vi">

  <info>

    <link type="guide" xref="color"/>

    <desc>Color management is important for designers, photographers and artists.</desc>

    <credit type="author">

      <name>Richard Hughes</name>

      <email>richard@hughsie.com</email>

    </credit>

    <include xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" href="legal.xml"/>

    <mal:credit xmlns:mal="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="translator copyright">

      <mal:name>Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy</mal:name>

      <mal:email>pclouds@gmail.com</mal:email>

      <mal:years>2011-2012.</mal:years>

    </mal:credit>

  </info>

  <title>Why is color management important?</title>

    Color management is the process of capturing a color using an input

    device, displaying it on a screen, and printing it all whilst managing

    the exact colors and the range of colors on each medium.

    The need for color management is probably explained best with a

    photograph of a bird on a frosty day in winter.

  <figure>

    <desc>A bird on a frosty wall as seen on the camera view-finder</desc>

    <media its:translate="no" type="image" mime="image/png" src="figures/color-camera.png"/>

  </figure>

    Displays typically over-saturate the blue channel, making the images

    look cold.

  <figure>

    <desc>This is what the user sees on a typical business laptop screen</desc>

    <media its:translate="no" type="image" mime="image/png" src="figures/color-display.png"/>

  </figure>

    Notice how the white is not “paper white” and the black of the eye

    is now a muddy brown.

  <figure>

    <desc>This is what the user sees when printing on a typical inkjet printer</desc>

    <media its:translate="no" type="image" mime="image/png" src="figures/color-printer.png"/>

  </figure>

    The basic problem we have here is that each device is capable of

    handling a different range of colors.

    So while you might be able to take a photo of electric blue, most

    printers are not going to be able to reproduce it.

    Most image devices capture in RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and have

    to convert to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) to print.

    Another problem is that you can’t have white ink, and so

    the whiteness can only be as good as the paper color.

    Another problem is units. Without specifying the scale on which a

    color is measured, we don’t know if 100% red is near infrared or

    just the deepest red ink in the printer. What is 50% red on one

    display is probably something like 62% on another display.

    It’s like telling a person that you’ve just driven 7 units of

    distance, without the unit you don’t know if that’s 7 kilometers or

    7 meters.

    In color, we refer to the units as gamut. Gamut is essentially the

    range of colors that can be reproduced.

    A device like a DSLR camera might have a very large gamut, being able

    to capture all the colors in a sunset, but a projector has a very

    small gamut and all the colors are going to look “washed out”.

    In some cases we can correct the device output by altering

    the data we send to it, but in other cases where that’s not

    possible (you can’t print electric blue) we need to show the user

    what the result is going to look like.

    For photographs it makes sense to use the full tonal range of a color

    device, to be able to make smooth changes in color.

    For other graphics, you might want to match the color exactly, which

    is important if you’re trying to print a custom mug with the Red Hat

    logo that has to be the exact Red Hat Red.

</page>