Creating a viewing environment for color management

Your work environment influences how you see color on your monitor and on printed output. For best results, control the colors and light in your work environment by doing the following:

• View your documents in an environment that provides a consistent light level and color temperature. For example, the color characteristics of sunlight change throughout the day and alter the way colors appear on your screen, so keep shades closed or work in a windowless room. To eliminate the blue-green cast from fluorescent lighting, you can install D50 (5000° Kelvin) lighting. You can also view printed documents using a D50 lightbox.

• View your document in a room with neutral-colored walls and ceiling. A room’s color can affect the perception of both monitor color and printed color. The best color for a viewing room is neutral gray. Also, the color of your clothing reflecting off the glass of your monitor may affect the appearance of colors on-screen.

• Remove colorful background patterns on your monitor desktop. Busy or bright patterns surrounding a document interfere with accurate color perception. Set your desktop to display neutral grays only.

• View document proofs in the real-world conditions under which your audience will see the final piece. For example, you might want to see how a housewares catalog looks under the incandescent light bulbs used in homes, or view an office furniture catalog under the fluorescent lighting used in offices. However, always make final color judgements under the lighting conditions specified by the legal requirements for contract proofs in your country.

Source: Adobe

Do you need color management?

Without a color management system, your color specifications are device-dependent. You might not need color management if your production process is tightly controlled for one medium only. For example, you or your print service provider can tailor CMYK images and specify color values for a known, specific set of printing conditions.

The value of color management increases when you have more variables in your production process. Color management is recommended if you anticipate reusing color graphics for print and online media, using various kinds of devices within a single medium (such as different printing presses), or if you manage multiple workstations.

You will benefit from a color management system if you need to accomplish any of the following:

• Get predictable and consistent color output on multiple output devices including color separations, your desktop printer, and your monitor. Color management is especially useful for adjusting color for devices with a relatively limited gamut, such as a four-color process printing press.

• Accurately soft-proof (preview) a color document on your monitor by making it simulate a specific output device. (Soft-proofing is subject to the limitations of monitor display, and other factors such as room lighting conditions.)

• Accurately evaluate and consistently incorporate color graphics from many different sources if they also use color management, and even in some cases if they don’t.

• Send color documents to different output devices and media without having to manually adjust colors in documents or original graphics. This is valuable when creating images that will eventually be used both in print and online.

• Print color correctly to an unknown color output device; for example, you could store a document online for consistently reproducible on-demand color printing anywhere in the world.

Source: Adobe

What is a color management system?

Color-matching problems result from various devices and software using different color spaces. One solution is to have a system that interprets and translates color accurately between devices. A color management system (CMS) compares the color space in which a color was created to the color space in which the same color will be output, and makes the necessary adjustments to represent the color as consistently as possible among different devices.

A color management system translates colors with the help of color profiles. A profile is a mathematical description of a device’s color space. For example, a scanner profile tells a color management system how your scanner “sees” colors. Adobe color management uses ICC profiles, a format defined by the International Color Consortium (ICC) as a cross-platform standard.

Because no single color-translation method is ideal for all types of graphics, a color management system provides a choice of rendering intents, or translation methods, so that you can apply a method appropriate to a particular graphics element. For example, a color translation method that preserves correct relationships among colors in a wildlife photograph may alter the colors in a logo containing flat tints of color.

Note: Don’t confuse color management with color correction. A color management system won’t correct an image that was saved with tonal or color balance problems. It provides an environment where you can evaluate images reliably in the context of your final output.

Source: Adobe

What is a color management system?

Color-matching problems result from various devices and software using different color spaces. One solution is to have a system that interprets and translates color accurately between devices. A color management system (CMS) compares the color space in which a color was created to the color space in which the same color will be output, and makes the necessary adjustments to represent the color as consistently as possible among different devices.

A color management system translates colors with the help of color profiles. A profile is a mathematical description of a device’s color space. For example, a scanner profile tells a color management system how your scanner “sees” colors. Adobe color management uses ICC profiles, a format defined by the International Color Consortium (ICC) as a cross-platform standard.

Because no single color-translation method is ideal for all types of graphics, a color management system provides a choice of rendering intents, or translation methods, so that you can apply a method appropriate to a particular graphics element. For example, a color translation method that preserves correct relationships among colors in a wildlife photograph may alter the colors in a logo containing flat tints of color.

Note: Don’t confuse color management with color correction. A color management system won’t correct an image that was saved with tonal or color balance problems. It provides an environment where you can evaluate images reliably in the context of your final output.


Source: Adobe

Movies and sounds (Part 4)

Add movies or sounds to PDFs

You can add movies and sounds to PDFs in Windows if the media is playable in Windows Media Player, Flash Player, RealPlayer, or QuickTime. In Mac OS, you can add QuickTime compatible movies and sounds to PDFs.

Before you add a movie or sound clip to a PDF, you must decide if your clip will be compatible—that is, playable—in Acrobat 6 and later, or in earlier versions as well. If you choose the Acrobat 6 Compatible Media option, you have many more choices, such as the option to embed the movie and add multiple renditions. However, users with earlier versions of Acrobat will have to download Adobe Reader to play your clip.

You can provide different renditions of the movie that play if the users’ settings vary. For example, you may want to include a low-resolution rendition for users with slow Internet connections.

Note: If an alert message tells you that no media handler is available, you must install the appropriate player before you can add clips to the PDF. For example, you must install QuickTime if you want to embed an MOV file in a PDF.

Source: Adobe

Movies and sounds (Part 3)

Multimedia Trust preferences

In the Multimedia Trust preferences, you can specify whether to play embedded multimedia files in trusted or nontrusted PDF documents. A trusted document is a document that you approved or that was produced by an author you approved. By setting your permissions to play multimedia only in trusted documents, you can prevent programs, macros, and viruses from playing on, and potentially damaging, your computer.

The list of trusted documents and authors is stored internally and can’t be viewed. If you add a certified document to the list, both the document and the author’s certificate are added to the list of trusted documents. All documents that are certified by this author are trusted. (Trusted documents also include PDFs that were created by authors in your list of trusted identities.)

To access these preferences, choose Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Acrobat > Preferences (Mac OS), and then select Multimedia Trust from the left side of the dialog box.

Display Permissions For

Choose whether you want to display security permissions for trusted documents or other (nontrusted) documents.

Allow Multimedia Operations

Select this option to allow media clips to be played. When selected, you can change the permission settings for a particular player and enable options that determine the appearance of the media during playback.

Change Permission Settings For A Player

Select the player in the list, and then choose one of the following options from the menu:

Always Allows the player to be used without prompting.

Never Prevents the player from being used.

Prompt Asks the user whether the player can be used. If you select this option and allow the player to play the media in a particular document, that document becomes trusted.

Clear Your List Of Trusted Documents

Deletes the current list of trusted documents and authors. Use this option to prevent media from playing in documents that were previously trusted documents or created by trusted authors. This option is available only when a PDF that contains multimedia is open.

Source: Adobe