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on a dull look in a department store because fluorescent lights add a
tinge of green to colors. At home the shirt may take on a softer look
due to incandescent lights which add a trace of red to colors.
The background against which a color is viewed also affects the
perception of the color. A red shirt stands out more vividly against a
white blazer than a black blazer. Thus, you can sharpen or soften a
color's perceived image by varying the background.
To compensate for these differences, the printing industry came up
with a standard viewing setting for matching colors. This setting
calls for a D50 (5000 Kelvin) light source with a neutral gray
background.
Note: A Kelvin is the unit of light measurement used as a standard
by the printing industry.
Color Gamut Variables
A color gamut is the range of colors that can be produced by a
device, such as a color monitor or printer, or recognized by a device,
such as a scanner or the human eye. Color gamuts differ between
devices. For example, the human color gamut is the color range of
light from red to violet that can be distinguished by the average
unaided human eye. A color monitor can produce a much smaller
range of colors (gamut) than the human eye can recognize and a
color printer has a smaller gamut than a color monitor.
These variations make it difficult to translate a color from device to
device for display to the human eye. ICC Profiles, Color Rendering
Dictionaries (CRDs), and Color Management Systems (CMSs) are
used to define color ranges for devices and define the transformation
of a color from one device to another.
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Imaging Basics 7-9
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Troubleshooting
