Exploring two simple steps for more accurate color

Here, I want to introduce you to the topic of color management. And I also want to share with you two simple steps that you can take in order to have more accurate color in your overall workflow. So for starters, what is color management? Well, color management refers to the way that we work with and manage color and also how we can communicate that color on different devices. Let's say how we can view this picture on our monitor, and also how we can send that image to the printer so that the color that were seeing on our monitor can be accurately reproduced, say, on a printer.

In other words, color management, it's all about clarity. It's about clarifying communication between multiple devices. And you know, there are some things that we can do in Photoshop in order to ensure that we have good color management practices. Before we even begin to work in Photoshop, there are two things that I recommend you do in order to ensure that you have more accurate color. Let's go ahead and talk about those. The first one is Monitor Calibration, the second one has to do with the Ambient Lighting that you have in your studio or your office.

Let's talk about Monitor Calibration first. Monitor Calibration is really important, and what you can do is you can use a device in order to calibrate your monitor. I'll actually be doing this later in this chapter. But I just want to introduce the topic here. You can use a device like this, the ColorMunki. This is the one that I use on my own monitors. This is a Colorimeter which measures the color on your monitor. In other words, what it does is it allows you to accurately create a profile which describes and displays the color on your monitor.

That way you can be certain that the color that you're seeing can be reproduced on different devices. The other thing that we need to do is to make sure that we have good ambient lighting in our studio or our offices. Typically, the light sources that we gravitate towards are really warm. Well, those light sources are inviting and sometimes beautiful, yet the trick is, is that all of that warm yellow light will be bouncing off of your walls and reflecting on your monitor. Therefore, when you're staring at a color on your monitor, what looks like white will actually look a little bit yellow.

It'll really skew your overall perspective. So what you want to do is you want to get a light source which is daylight balanced, and you can do this by purchasing really expensive light sources like this one here, or you can just go to your local hardware store and look for a light bulb which says that it's daylight balanced. Now initially when you first start working with a light source like this, it'll seem a little bit too neutral, maybe even a bit sterile. But eventually you'll come to enjoy and appreciate it because it will give you a really neutral and clean color palette so that you can then more accurately analyze and view the color on your monitor.

All right. Well, after having set up these two things, what we need to do next is take a look at how we can manage color when working in Photoshop. Let's talk about that in the next movie.