Color management

Color management is this thing that was always somewhat scary for me. Complicated stuff with calibration, profiles, color spaces, etc. etc. - once you understand the concept its pretty logical (at most of the time...) but when I look back to the times when I was an absolute beginner in this area and read some of the guides that are available I think that they could still be easier for the novice to understand.

There are two pages that I always redirect my friends to when they ask me about an introduction to color management, its Thom Hogans "Quick & Dirty Guide to Color Management" and Jeffrey Friedls series of articles for a more in-depth look at color spaces. But are those articles really easy enough to understand for the novice?

I just want to pick up the single most important advice for all novice digital photographers and people that show 95% of their photos on the web anyway: use sRGB - don't think about using other color spaces. Its really that simple.

So thats the "what to do" part (I assume you know how to set your camera to sRGB if you're using JPEG).

And now for the "and why?!" part:

• the display: if you did not buy a "wide color gamut" display, chances are that your display won't be able to show you anything more than sRGB. If you look at the best-known brands that offer wide color gamut displays (the list of vendors you might want to check out will include Eizo, NEC and maybe Samsung) you'll notice that those are not consumer devices. They are expensive. There is no wide color gamut 22" widescreen display for 250€ - no way.
• web browsers: sRGB is the de-facto standard color space for the web. Today, this means: if the web browser is not color aware it will dismiss any profile embedded in the photo - and just use sRGB. Which means that photos using any other color space than sRGB will look more or less wrong. Whats more problematic is that only Safari (the browser from Apple) is color aware out of the box. Support for embedded color profiles can be turned on in Firefox with an extra switch, but FF is not color aware by default! The beta of Google Chrome for Mac is color managed, and IE for Mac was color managed too (IE for Windows is not). Opera? I don't know, sorry. Jao is watching the color awareness of some applications in his blog - check it out. If you're not sure if your browser supports color profiles go to this webpage and check it. Surprised?

And even if you have a wide color gamut display and your web browser is color aware - most of the visitors to your online photo albums will most likely have none of it and/or not even know about it. Conclusion: for publishing on the web, use sRGB. Just forget them folks in your photo club that tell you to use AdobeRGB/ProPhoto because it can show more color. Its irrelevant for the web!

Please note: I'm not saying that sRGB is the cure-all that everyone should use. I just say that today with the situation of web browsers and display technology, its the least common denominator, and since it is the de-facto standard for the web and in the Windows world, novices and people that publish the majority of their photos only on the web should stick confidently and comfortably to sRGB.