Color Management and Windows: An Introduction

Updated: December 4, 2001

On This Page

  Introduction to Color Management
  Why Color Management is Required
  Image Color Management Features
  "Designed for Microsoft Windows" Requirements for Color Management
  For More Information

Introduction to Color Management

Color Is Pervasive Across Media, Yet Difficult to Reproduce Consistently

Over the years, magazines, newspapers, television, computers and, now, the Internet have all made the transition from black and white to color.

Now that all of these media use color, they all provide professional designers with the challenge of finding a way to get consistent color from page to screen to printer and beyond. Consistent color across various displays and types of output is critical to success. For example, in the publishing industry, consistent color throughout the commercial publishing process will save both time and money. Designers want to ensure that their clients' printed material will produce the same results when the job is passed to the service bureau, trade shop, and printer and that it will also look great when it's made available on the Internet.

The same is true for business professionals developing color presentations, or consumers wanting to buy products from an Internet site. All of these users expect "true," or what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG), computer color across all input and output peripherals, and across various publishing and productivity applications.

With color, however, WYSIWYG results across scanners, monitors, applications, and printers are often difficult, or impossible, to achieve for two reasons:

• Different illuminants and colorants. There is no color without light. White light contains the three components of color, namely red, green, and blue (RGB), and the perception of color is based on which of these wavelengths reach our eyes. Monitors and scanners are based on the "additive" color system using RGB, starting with black and then adding red, green, and blue to achieve color. Full saturation of RGB gives the perception of white, and images are created that radiate varying amounts of RGB. Printers are based on the "subtractive" color system, usually using the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). Printed material creates images by reflecting light off of substances such as ink, dye, wax, and toner. Printers begin with white (the presence of white light) and subtract RGB to achieve colors and black. Cyan, for instance, subtracts red and allows the reflection of green and blue. Both RGB and CMYK are known as device-dependent color systems or "color spaces." Monitors can look different from one another for a variety of reasons, such as variances in the phosphors used to radiate the light and different bit depths. Printers can also give different results depending on a number of factors, such as the media and inks used.

• Different gamuts. Each device, whether a scanner, monitor, or printer, has a particular range of colors that it is capable of producing, known as the device gamut. The gamut of a device is determined by the physical characteristics of the device itself, as well as the ambient lighting (for instance, the colors may appear rich in a dimly lit room and washed out in bright viewing conditions). A low-cost color monitor can, in many cases, reproduce nearly twice the number of colors as a multimillion dollar printing press, because the gamut of the monitor is superior to that of the press. The gamuts of devices of the same type may vary. For instance, the gamuts of scanners depend on the technology used (flatbed, drum, charge-coupled device) as well as the media scanned (reflective vs. transparent). With monitors, the gamut depends on the composition of the phosphors. With printers, the gamut varies depending on the inks and media used.

If you have a computer peripheral capable of capturing, displaying, printing, or in some other way dealing with color at a user visible level, you are already aware of some of the problems inherent with dealing with color in the digital world. If you have ever tried to buy a "Forest Green" shirt on the Internet, and then wondered about the actual color of the shirt you received in the mail, you have experienced the problems first hand.

Color management does not solve all of these problems magically; it simply gives you and the user more control. Basically, each color peripheral can differ on one or more of the following color characteristics:

• Color space: RGB, CMYK, LAB, XYZ, and others

• Gamut range: For printers, this varies for each supported media and ink.
  For monitors, this varies according to the phosphors used in the monitor, the type of video card.
  For scanners, this varies according to the technology used (flatbed or drum), the CCD and light source, and the media (reflective or transparent).
  

• Gamma curve: For printers, these curves vary for each supported media.
  For scanners, these curves vary between transparencies and reflective media.
  For monitors, this varies by manufacturer but it can be controlled with the appropriate video card.
  

• White point, plus many more characteristics

These differences are unavoidable in most cases, because of the limitations of the devices or media in question. However, these differences can be tested for and recorded in an International Color Consortium (ICC) profile using one of many software and hardware products currently available on the market. These ICC profiles are then used to communicate through the rest of the Integrated Color Management (ICM) system to ensure that colors are represented accurately to users, regardless of the device they use.

Because color science is so complex, it is impossible to completely eliminate the above differences. However, there is a way to improve the situation - a color management system. CMS performs three main functions:

• Maps colors between devices that have different gamuts (e.g., scanners and monitors)

• Transforms colors from one color space to another (e.g., RGB to CMYK)

• Provides accurate on-screen or print previews that allow for corrective action

 Top of page

Why Color Management is Required

Color Management at the Operating System-Level Brings Advantages Over Application-Specific Color

In the publishing process, images and graphics are captured by scanners and digital cameras as well as from CDs, and they are brought together in editing and composition packages. From here, design professionals use a variety of proofing systems to simulate the final printed output and, ultimately, generate film for plate generation for final delivery to commercial printing presses. Designers also take these graphics to the Internet. Business and home users are likely to deliver their final graphics to a color printer, to the Internet, or to an intranet in corporate environments.

The publishing process is summarized in the following figure:

Figure 1. The publishing process

Being able to consistently reproduce color across scanners, monitors, printers, and applications sounds like a simple goal, but without a color management system in the operating system, it's difficult to achieve.

Without a standard CMS, each application writes to a different proprietary color management system with little or no interaction with the operating system. Each application generates its own color profiles, limiting the ability for consistent color interchange throughout the publishing process, which includes scanning, editing and composition, proofing, and distribution. The applications may produce different results.

Figure 2. Application-specific color management

In addition, each application must supply profiles for all kinds of devices, as well as profile generation tools for all types of devices, a disadvantage to both the application developer and to the user.

As a result of each application generating its own profiles for every conceivable device, and in the absence of consistent interchange between devices, acceptable color on the output is achieved largely through trial and error.

 Top of page

Image Color Management Features

ICM Background and HistoryMicrosoft Corporation first implemented CMS in the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system as Image Color Management (ICM) 1.0, an API to which third-party applications can write. This version of ICM was designed to address the needs of applications that work with RGB, to work seamlessly for the end user, and to enable simple support from application developers.

ICM 1.0 supports profiles that conform to the International Color Consortium (ICC) profile specification. The ICC profile specification is a cross-platform industry standard that accurately and consistently characterizes devices including scanners, monitors, and printers. The ICC started in 1993 as an organization to promote color standards with desktop applications.

ICM profiles must be installed for all of the color devices on the user's system, and applications that need to portray colors accurately must support the ICM 1.0 API.

The ICM 1.0 technology supports alternate color management modules (CMMs) that transform color information between different color spaces, such as the RGB colors captured by the scanner to the slightly different RGB values displayed on a monitor or sent to printers.

For additional information about profiles andother color management technologies, see "For More Information" at the end of this article.

ICM 2.0 Features

After listening to customers and application vendors, Microsoft enhanced the capability of ICM to provide increased functionality and performance and to bring it to the Windows operating systems. Microsoft also wanted support for more color spaces (beyond RGB to CMYK, to device-independent color spaces such as CIELAB, a theoretical color space defined by the Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage, or CIE), as well as support for additional colors for processes such as HiFi Color.

Working with multiple industry leaders in the color field, Microsoft has designed ICM 2.0. The new APIs are a complete superset of the ICM 1.0 APIs and add a new range of capabilities:

• ICM 1.0 compatible

• ICC compliant

• Scalable: Simple APIs for applications such as Microsoft Office, complete control for applications such as Adobe PhotoShop

• Identical APIs for Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems

• Support for profile management at API and UI level

• Bitmap v5 header support

• Standard color space support: standard RGB (sRGB)

• Broader color space support: RGB, CMYK, LAB, and others

• Broader support for bitmap formats

• Improved palette handling

• Device driver participation on the Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems

• Support for multiple Color Management Modules (CMM)

• Faster default CMM that supports all ICC-compliant profiles

• Easier installation of profiles

ICM 2.0 supports the LinoColor color management module (CMM) as the default CMM. The CMM transforms color information across various devices. Linotype-Hell AG is one of the leading vendors of color technology in the publishing and prepress world. This technology is now expected to become available to all applications that support the ICM 2.0 API.

ICM 2.0 supports up to eight input and output color channels for enhanced printing processes such as HiFi Color.

This new version of ICM is integrated into Windows 98 and Windows 2000.

ICM Supports Industry Standards, Ensuring Cross-Platform Compatibility

By licensing the industry-standard LinoColor CMM and continuing support for ICC profiles, Microsoft is helping to ensure that applications that support ICM 2.0 will be compatible with other platforms, a fact that is important because multiple platforms may be used throughout the color publishing process.

Like ICM 1.0, ICM 2.0 supports the ICC profiles, allowing the same device profiles to be used across platforms and ensuring better color management throughout the publishing process.

ICM Provides Ease-of-Use for Applications

For productivity and entry-level publishing applications, ICM 2.0 can be configured to be completely transparent to the end user.

For professional publishing applications, full manual control is available, in each case ensuring color consistency across devices and platforms. In addition, for professional publishers, ICM provides an easy-to-use selection method for choosing alternative profiles.

ICM Has a Modular, Extensible Architecture

Applications will have the ability to support two levels of API - one that deals only in RGB, and one that works in multiple color spaces. As developers take advantage of these enhanced capabilities, users will be able to manage device profiles and select an alternate CMM for their color transformations.

The architecture is summarized in the following figure:

Figure 3. ICM 2.0 technology overview

ICM Supports Standard RGB (sRGB)

ICM provides a standard way to manage color between any input device (e.g., scanner) and output device (e.g., monitor), including the ability to embed ICC profiles directly into the image or to pass the ICC profile directly to the application. The application, along with ICM and the rendering intent, generates a transform that ensures accurate color representation between the input and output device.

Embedding the ICC profile into each image is an excellent way to ensure that the color profile information is being passed along throughout the publishing process. However, the additional overhead it adds to the image may be unacceptable for transmission over the Internet. Also, several image formats currently do not support embedded ICC profiles, which makes it very difficult to represent the color image accurately.

Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft have created a new color space, standard RGB (sRGB), that is meant to complement current color management strategies by enabling another method of handling color in the operating system and the Internet. It will provide good quality color representation and backward compatibility, with minimum transmission and system overhead. Based on a calibrated colorimetric RGB color space, which is well-suited to monitors, television, scanners, digital cameras and printing systems, sRGB can be supported with minimum cost to software and hardware vendors.

In addition, both companies have worked with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure that sRGB is available to all vendors. sRGB has been the standard color space since HTML 3.2 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 1.0, and it is freely available to any software or hardware vendor.

Microsoft also plans to make sRGB the default color space in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems for all color images that do not have an embedded ICC profile, or for images that are not specifically tagged with other color information. This will help ensure that colors are represented in a way that looks best on the widest range of devices.

A summary of when sRGB is expected to be used is outlined in Figure 4. The "source" referred to in the figure could be a scanner, and the "destination" could be a monitor.

Figure 4. sRGB is used as the default color space in the color mapping process

 Top of page

"Designed for Microsoft Windows" Requirements for Color Management

To ensure that your device benefits from the color management capabilities of ICM 1.0 and 2.0, a set of requirements is specified for imaging in the Windows Logo Program for Hardware.

The Windows family of operating systems support using color profiles that comply with the ICC Profile Format specification. The ICM APIs and functionality are described in the Microsoft Platform SDK and the Windows DDK.

Color-capable devices such as desktop CRT monitors, LCDs on mobile systems, color plasma and other flat-panel devices, and printers are all required to install one or more ICC profiles for ICC color management. A monitor color-calibrations utility is recommended for generating, editing, and installing ICC profiles. Scanners and digital still cameras are required to either install ICC profiles or output sRGB. The sRGB profile is available in Windows 98/Me and Windows 2000/Windows XP.

 Top of page

For More Information

• The Integrated Color Management (ICM) APIs and functionality are described in the Microsoft Platform SDK, available through MSDN Professional Subscription, and the Windows DDK.

• For information about the ICC Profile Format Specification, see the International Color Consortium web site at http://www.color.org/ 

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML 4.0 Web site:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/ 

• W3C CSS 2.0 Web site:
  http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ 

• W3C sRGB Web site:
  http://www.w3.org/Graphics/Color/sRGB.html 

 Top of page

Related Links

• Colorspace Interchange Using sRGB

 Top of page