Quite simply if you don't actively manage colour, you'll quickly find that colours don't look the same on your computer screen as they do on your desktop printer.

And neither of those will look the same as output produced on a professional press. This can be a real problem for designers and professional printers alike.

A designer can create something that looks beautiful on screen, only to find it looks washed out when printed on their desktop proofing printer for the client to see.

Worse still when a client signs off a proof you've produced on one printer only to find it looks different when produced at press - something that can be very expensive if your client refuses the final print job and you have to print again.

	Your monitor won't display colours correctly Screen colours will look different when printed Your proofs won't match your press output Colours will look different when viewed on different PC's in your office Your client will see your work in different colours when they print or view it online

Colours look different on different devices for two main reasons.

1 - Different types of device have different colour ranges

Different devices can output different ranges of colours. The range of colours a device can output is called it's gamut or colour space.

Monitors, for example, produce colour by emitting light whilst we see colour on printed materials from the way they reflect and absorb light. Within the range of printed materials, different materials have different reflective properties - so the same colour can look different on different materials.

2 - Output devices have a range of tolerances within which they work
Monitors, printers, scanners and cameras are all mass produced devices that might all look the same, but will behave only similarly - within a range of tolerances.

All of these devices rely on production processes and components which will vary slightly over time and vary even more between product models and as new technologies are implemented. This means that the colours they display for a given input value will vary very slightly between devices within a model range and slightly more between models and different manufacturers.

This effect is multiplied when dealing with print media because there are three products in use when we print : - the printer or press, the ink and the paper. Inks from different manufacturers have different properties and will absorb onto different papers at different rates, varying the colour output. Colours also look different on papers that are coated to papers that are not coated - so glossy paper produces a slightly different colour range to matt paper - again, due to the way the ink is absorbed and the way light is reflected off it.

Well, there's a little bit more. Even when you're looking at exactly the same print, produced using the same ink and paper on the same printer, you'll find the colours vary depending on the ambient light in the area in which you're looking at it.

So look at a print under fluorescent office light and it will look different than when you're looking at in daylight and different again when you're looking at it in a domestic (non-flourescent) lighting setting. The differences can be very striking and this underlines the importance of taking this into account when examining proofs. Don't worry about this though - when we look at the LMAL colour management solution we'll show you how to address this.

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