FROM THE BASICS OF COLOR THEORY TO ACTUAL PRINTING

The world is becoming more and more colorful. Colors are present in our everyday life painted on buildings, printed on paper and displayed electronically on monitors and TV screens, or the LCD screen of a camcorder. Information has to go through a long way from the original object to the eye of the viewer. This way may include numerous artificial media like digital cameras, different types of scanners, DVDs or CD-ROMs, magnetic disks, digital files, a network for transmitting digital information, monitors, printers, devices for storing image files etc. These media may not ”speak the same language”, meaning they have different ways of capturing, processing, transmitting and outputting color information. They all have their own unique features, as well as their own specific color scale which they can represent – called a color gamut. It is up to image processing software to provide a ”common language” for devices of different origin, structure and function. Color processing can be considered effective if viewers have the impression that what they see is a true representation of the original object, no matter how many different devices we might have applied in the process. This goal can be achieved by Color Management (CM), which is method to ensure clear and true-to-the-original representation by using advanced techniques of color processing.