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 Monitor Calibration and Web Color Consistency
This paper describes the role of monitor calibration in the pursuit of color consistency on the Internet, and provides background on the color production methods of the major desktop and portable display devices. It provides descriptions of various means of measurement and adjustment, and background on relevant industry standards such as ICC profiles. Catalog publishers know the importance of consistent color in their imagery: an image instills emotion and sets expectations in the audience's mind. However, an image's actual color appearance is affected by the way color is produced by the print media. Thus, the pre-press industry faces the challenge of creating on PCs and printing with inks on volume production presses. The resource- intensive solutions for this industry reflect both the importance of consistent color as well as the technical challenge of creating, editing, proofing and finally printing color images on devices that produce color by widely different means with controllable results.
For most of us, who aren't producing content for million-copy runs on offset presses, the technical challenges of color consistency are somewhat less daunting but still complex. For those of us creating content for the web to be shown on our visitors' displays, the problem boils down to this: how can our teams collaborate effectively to create sites with images that will display with consistent color on our visitors' monitors? Background: Impact of system differences. Differences between the designs and configurations of monitors and of display controllers will cause the same picture file to appear differently from one screen to the next. What's more, even the same monitor will show colors differently when connected to different video cards. If you've used a PC to look at an image created on a Macintosh or vice versa, you've seen this effect in washed out colors or pictures that seem impossibly dark. For an illustration of how computer display systems produce color.
As a result of system differences, the image files you work with for your site will appear differently to your colleagues when they view them. This can lead to a productivity-draining series of image edits, as each colleague sequentially reacts to the image as displayed on his or her unique system and tweaks it to 'look right.' What's worse, the finished image will appear differently to visitors viewing them on their specific systems than they did to your team, and the differences will vary for each visitor. Even the web safe palette (colors which aren't dithered when viewed cross- platform in 256 color mode) isn't immune from the effect of system differences: for a demonstration using only web safe colors, Though today's web environment poses a challenge to color consistency, new tools and creative use of existing tools provide the basis for authoring web sites with great, consistent color. Available Tools. Driven initially by the broad challenges faced by the pre-press industry, color management tools and standards have been developed, many of which can be adapted to the needs of the web developer. |
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Standard descriptions of color capabilities
The International Color Consortium, sets forth a standard way to describe the ability of a device to produces color in a data file, called an ICC profile. Typical monitor ICC profiles are quite small, about 2-4 Kbytes. Monitor Characterization Solutions. Unlike printers that have integrated controllers, display systems have separate controllers and monitors. Thus color characteristics must be measured, or characterized, in the field after purchase and user configuration. Software utilities and hardware devices, such as Pantone's Pantone Personal Color Calibrator (P2C2) and X-Rite's Monitor Optimizer, are available to measure an installed display system's color behavior as configured and create an accurate ICC monitor profile for that specific installation from the results. Monitor Calibration Solutions. Some of the software and hardware utilities can use the characterization measurement data to change, or calibrate, display behavior to a known or desired state. Authoring organizations can use these tools to set all their monitors to display colors consistently, improving productivity during production and editing cycles. Calibration utilities regenerate a new ICC monitor profile when/if calibration settings are changed.
OS infrastructure Microsoft's Image Color Management (ICM), built into Windows versions since Windows 95, and Apple's ColorSync use ICC profiles and provide ways for applications to correct images, depending on the difference between the ICC profile for the local system and a profile for the device the image was created on. Authoring Software Image authoring and web editing tools, such as Adobe's Photoshop and GoLive, that work with ICC profiles and operating system color management tools provide a platform for collaborating as a team on web content in a color-consistent manner. Server Color Correction. E-Color, Inc. has recently announced True Internet Color Server, which uses ICC authoring profiles and web-based calibration to customize image colors specifically for each visitor's system.
Calibration Solutions in Context Each of the tools above plays a crucial role in a color-consistency solution. Note that a common underlying thread is reliance on an accurate ICC monitor profile. Let's now focus on monitor characterization and calibration. We'll use the process followed by the Windows version of Colorific V99 as an illustration, however the processes used by other calibrators will follow the same general path.
Monitor measurement [characterization] This is the foundation for all display color correction: measuring the monitor and controller as a system. To measure a monitor, the software provides a set of carefully constructed images on the screen. Interactions between parts of each image, as viewed by the person doing the calibration, provide the data used to determine the system display characteristics. With the measurement complete, characterization software proceeds to write an ICC monitor profile and store it where needed by the operating system, as well as maintain the characterization information for later use in calibration. |
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