Color-managing documents for online viewing

Color management for online viewing is very different from color management for printed media. With printed media, you have far more control over the appearance of the final document. With online media, your document will appear on a wide range of possibly uncalibrated monitors and video display systems, significantly limiting your control over color consistency.

When you color-manage documents that will be viewed exclusively on the web, Adobe recommends that you use the sRGB color space. sRGB is the default working space for most Adobe color settings, but you can verify that sRGB is selected in the Color Settings dialog box (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign) or the Color Management preferences (Acrobat). With the working space set to sRGB, any RGB graphics you create will use sRGB as the color space.

When working with images that have an embedded color profile other than sRGB, you should convert the image’s colors to sRGB before you save the image for use on the web. If you want the application to automatically convert the colors to sRGB when you open the image, select Convert To Working Space as the RGB color management policy. (Make sure that your RGB working space is set to sRGB.) In Photoshop and InDesign, you can also manually convert the colors to sRGB using the Edit > Convert To Profile command.

Note: In InDesign, the Convert To Profile command only converts colors for native, not placed, objects in the document.

Source: Adobe

View or change profiles for imported bitmap images (InDesign)

InDesign allows you to view, override, or disable profiles for imported bitmap images. This may be necessary when you are importing an image containing no profile or an incorrectly embedded profile. For example, if the scanner manufacturer’s default profile was embedded but you have since generated a custom profile, you can assign the newer profile.

1. Do one of the following:

   • If the graphic is already in layout, select it and choose Object > Image Color Settings.

   • If you’re about to import the graphic, choose File > Place, select Show Import Options, select and open the file, and then select the Color tab.

2. For Profile, choose the source profile to apply to the graphic in your document. If a profile is currently embedded, the profile name appears at the top of the Profile menu.
3. (Optional) Choose a rendering intent, and then click OK. In most cases, it’s best to use the default rendering intent.

Note: You can also view or change profiles for objects in Acrobat.

Source: Adobe

Preparing imported graphics for color management (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop)

Use the following general guidelines to prepare graphics for being color-managed in Adobe applications:

• Embed an ICC-compliant profile when you save the file. The file formats that support embedded profiles are JPEG, PDF, PSD (Photoshop), AI (Illustrator), INDD (InDesign), and TIFF.

• If you plan to reuse a color graphic for multiple final output devices or media, such as for print, video, and the web, prepare the graphic using RGB or Lab colors whenever possible. If you must save in a color model other than RGB or Lab, keep a copy of the original graphic. RGB and Lab color models represent larger color gamuts than most output devices can reproduce, retaining as much color information as possible before being translated to a smaller output color gamut.

Source: Adobe