This article appeared in the November/December 2002 issue of PT. To purchase this issue and receive this and other valuable articles in this issue,
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Color Management for Photographers
An overview of color and the digital imaging process
by Andrew C. Eads

Many of my friends are retiring their darkrooms for a mix of conventional and digital photography. From their archives of negatives, prints and transparencies, they are building collections of photos onto CD’s, putting them on the Web for others to see and are making some really fine looking prints…and some not so fine prints. They want to know why the appearance on the screen is often different from the print they make.

While my friends have a pretty good understanding of how film-based photography works, the digital side is somewhat mysterious. And with good reason. There are many hidden processes that go on inside a computer when you scan a photograph or import a digital camera file. Compounding this, are some really confusing and misleading choices presented by even the top image-editing software programs.

So, how is the color we see translated into digital form? How is it transformed so what we see on the computer screen looks like what will be printed? This article presents a framework that will help you understand the inner workings of a digital photography system.

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