Terry Relph-Knight

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Posted on 26-03-2009

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Conclusion — Defining Your Work Flows

Perhaps the best way to approach colour management is to first define the work flows you will use.

For example a photographer might only ever work with bitmap images and will mainly work in RGB up until the printing stage. If these are to be only small run prints rather than printed as part of a publication on a commercial press then is no need to prepare separations, most of the work flow can be in RGB and the CMYK conversions either left to the desktop printer and its driver. A hobbyist photographer might choose to set their camera for sRGB output. Depending on the camera sRGB might be the only choice. A professional photographer is more likely to choose RAW mode, a mode which outputs the image data as registered by the CCD sensor, without any intermediate processing by the camera electronics. Using this mode often requires the use of a dedicated RAW mode driver supplied by the camera manufacturer.

A graphics designer will often import digital photographs, but will manipulate and combine these with vector graphic elements. Graphic design work is usually intended for publication via a commercial printing press so it is sensible to choose to work with the effects in CMYK (this is CorelDRAWs default mode) and to soft proof using the commercial press profile.