Adobe 18030211 - Creative Suite 2 Standard User Manual page 40

Color workflows

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The range of color reproducible on some printers and printing presses, however, is much

smaller than what people can see and what most scanners and digital cameras can

deﬁne. Adobe RGB has a color range larger than a press running at SWOP standards,

but sRGB does not. It's important to consider the range of color, or gamut, of each of the

devices in your workﬂow and choose a working space that is appropriate.

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These color gamut plots show the relative sizes of some color device and standard working spaces.

Note that the scanner's gamut is the largest, followed by Adobe RGB. The gamut of an inkjet printer

nearly equals that of Adobe RGB, while those of a SWOP printing press and newspaper press are much

smaller. To retain an image's maximum color gamut for repurposing, keep the image in the largest

standard working space possible.

Adobe Creative Suite 2 components use working spaces that give users common ICC

proﬁles for storing and working with color data. To retain all of a photo's original color,

a standard working space proﬁle should accommodate as much of the original photo's

color gamut as possible. When photos are converted to a smaller standard working

space or printer proﬁle, some of the color gamut and impact of the photo is lost.

To maintain the closest appearance to the original, photos should be kept in a standard

working space that does not limit the range of color of your output device. For example,

the color gamut of Adobe RGB is larger than the gamut of most printing presses. If

ICC Proﬁles are used when printing, they intelligently reduce the range of colors in

the image to match the range of colors of the press. Consider a digital camera photo of

colorfully clothed people on a sunny beach. If the photo is published in a newspaper,

much of its colorfulness is lost because of the newspaper's small gamut. The same photo

published on a website, however, can probably be displayed on monitors with most of

its original saturation. If the photo is kept in a larger space than the output device and

then converted separately for the newspaper press and for the web, each form of output

can take advantage of the full range of color of the speciﬁc device. However, if the photo

is ﬁrst converted to newspaper CMYK and then converted to sRGB for the web, the

saturation lost to the press cannot be regained for the web. For this reason, it is best

to keep photos in a large standard working space as long as possible, converting color

at the time of output. This facilitates repurposing images, using the same image for

diﬀerent types of output that have diﬀerent-sized color gamuts.

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Color Workflows for Adobe Creative Suite 2

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Creative suite 2