Out of Gamut: Setting Up Color Management in Photoshop 6

Bruce Fraser

Getting a Clue
When you set up Photoshop Color Settings as recommended here, your choice of working space becomes much less critical than in any other configuration, because each document can essentially have its own working space. To make per-document color more manageable, Photoshop lets you see which space is in effect for each image by choosing Document Profile from the pop-up menu at the lower left of the image window.
Photoshop also provides subtle clues when an image is either untagged or in a different space than the current working space. Each window’s title bar lists the filename, the zoom percentage, and the color mode. Untagged files display a pound sign (#) after the color mode, while images that are in a space other than the working space display an asterisk (*) after the color mode.
Roadmap
Here is a very general set of guidelines for using color management with the policy settings we’ve recommended:

1. First, evaluate the image by opening it in its embedded profile’s space. If it looks good and doesn’t require much editing, convert it to your output space with Convert to Profile (from the Mode submenu of the Image menu). Particularly if the image is in an RGB capture space — the color space of a scanner or digital camera — convert it into a working space before doing any heavy editing, using Convert to Profile. This is a good idea because RGB capture spaces are rarely gray-balanced or uniform, and RGB printer spaces are even less so, making it hard to edit in them.
2. If an RGB image is in a working space that’s different from the one you use, it’s probably better to leave it in that space for editing rather than converting it to your working space: Repeated color space conversions will degrade the image, so unnecessary ones are best avoided. That said, if you plan to composite the image with others that are in your working space, go ahead and convert it, because you’ll have to do so for compositing anyway.
3. Even if you know the CMYK printing process for which an image is destined, it still makes sense to make a quick evaluation of the image in its embedded profile space. Doing so allows you to get an idea of the intentions of those who created the file. By embedding the profile, they are essentially telling you how they want the image to look. Then, you can determine how the file will actually print on your printing process either by assigning it your CMYK profile using Assign Profile from the Mode submenu, or, if you’ve set the profile for that printing process as your CMYK working space, by choosing Proof Colors from the View menu. Depending on how the image looks, you may want to convert it from the embedded profile to your CMYK profile, or simply edit the image to the desired appearance. In the latter case, use Assign Profile to assign your CMYK profile.Soft-Proofing and Printing
   So far we’ve covered all the basics except how to soft-proof and print your color-managed images. These topics demand a column of their own, however, partly because of the platform differences between the Mac and PC. We’ll tell you what you need to know in part 2 of this article, in an upcoming Out of Gamut. In the meantime, my past column on soft-proofing in Photoshop 6.0 may give you a head start. 

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