Ultimate Mac and Adobe Color Management Setup

[ItsWilder]

I know there are multiple points of color mangement on the Mac, from True Tone and Night Shift to apps with individual profiles. Adjusting any one of these settings can have a dramatic effect on what the designer is seeing vs. the client.

Is there an ultimate setup for digital (web, social, broadcast) and print work?

1) I'm assuming every designer turns OFF both True Tone and Night Shift in their preferences? The problem is there is also a sliding scale within the Night Shift prefs for "Color Temperature". I've got mine set more towards "less warm" but I'm curious what others have it set too.

2) There is also a "Display Profile" setting on the Mac. Mine is set to the default iMac setting but I'm wondering if I should adjust that as well.

3) Each app also has it's own color profile settings independent of the Mac's display and those settings might be different for digital vs print:

• For digital, I usually set my Color Settings to sRGB IEC61966-2.1
• For print, I would imagine there's a multitude of options depending on the final outcome. Would it be alright to simply design in sRGB IEC61966-2.1 within PSD, AI, or ID and then convert the final flattened artwork to CMYK? I've had several print designers in the past tell me that was fine.

I'm hoping others, who might have more experience managing color, can help sort out this list of "Ultimate Color Settings" so that we're all being more consistent in out work. Let me know what your setup is as well.

[Bob_Hallam]

If the only concern is software settings, there are best practices, but those best practices should be used with some pretty hard and fast rules for hardware, calibration, and environment to make a good color managed system.  

1.) yes turn off True Tone and Night shift.  These will change your display color based on time of day and environment, which in a color managed system must remain static.  

By static I mean no window light and a dim or somewhat dark environment.  Having window light will change your adapted white because your eyes will adapt to the brightest light in the environment. If that's not your monitor, it should be a ISO standard light booth with the correct 5000k lamps.  

2.) Display profiles are made by measuring the light output of your display.   There are good tools for this made by X-rite and others.   Don't change your monitor profile.  Make a new one with the proper monitor brightness for your newly chosen environment.  Too bright and the shadow details will be to bright and not represent either a standard web workflow or any calibrated print workflow.  

3. For the web your sRGB profile is correct but not recommended for any high quality print work as it is a smaller color space than needed.  Use Adobe 1998 for most print work and try and for go any conversion to CMYK.  These days print is done in many ways and printers have their own color management that they know works best.   So doing that conversion beforehand limits your work and may also keep it from matching across print processes.  Specify all flat colors as PMS and let the conversion happen at the press.   That is the ultimate way to maintain consistent color. 

save your color settings and sync them across all Adobe apps using bridge.  Then change and sync always on bridge.  

[ItsWilder]

Thanks Bob!

So for print, you're also suggesting to work in RGB (but Adobe 1998 vs. sRGB IEC61966-2.1); then let the printer do the conversion to CMYK in order to give them more flexibility?

Syncing via Bridge is something I didn't realize was possible. Thanks! I've now set a "Custom" profile which sets sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as the default RGB profile. Then under "Color Management Policies", I've set the defualts to "Convert to Working Space" - that way all items pasted or opened will all be shown in sRGB IEC61966-2.1.

That should just about do it, right?

[D Fosse]

Don't use "convert to working space". Always use "preserve embedded profiles".

Convert to working is a very special setting for very restricted workflows. In any normal situation, you want to honor whatever profile is already embedded in the file. The working space is just supposed to be a fallback default - the embedded document profile should always override the working space.

Color management is actually very simple in use. It basically works out of the box. The basic principle is a source profile and a destination profile, and remapping from one into the other, thereby preserving color appearance. Inconsistencies happen in applications that don't do it, causing people to think color management is "broken". But it's not. The other applications are broken.

There is also a myth that color management is very complicated, which rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it makes people look for over-complicated solutions when they don't have to. And then they mess everything up.

You just have to take a few precautions:

• always make sure there is a embedded document profile (source profile)
• use a calibrator to make an accurate monitor profile (destination profile)
• use software that supports color management, which will remap the data from the source to the destination, preserving color appearance

[Bob_Hallam]

If what yor showing is your digital web RGB workflow and not your print workflow you are close.   Color Management policies are for supplied files outside of your normal workflow.  To use them in your workflow suplied files require embedded profiles.  If the supplied files are CMYK, preserving embedded profiles is the proper option to take importing files for a digital RGB workflow.   After these CMYK files are open they can be converted to sRGB to fit within the normal web workflow.    Your defined working space is the actual color space for your workflow and all files should end up in that color space before your work is done and uploaded to the web or delivered to your client.  So iy is not only safe but necessary that all RGB files be converted on open.  CMYK files are handled seperately but still end up as sRGB to go to your web based workflow.  

In a Print workflow, If suppled RGB is in a smaller color space than Adobe RGB 1998 then it realy doesn't matter if you convert them or not because they are allready in a smaller color space and converting them to a larget one preserves that spall apace.   You may wish to try and assign Adobe RGB instead which will make the sRGB image more colorful.  That is a color change that sometimes helps images but is usually a matter of taste.   Handleing CMYK files in a print workflow it is best to preserve the embedded profile and open the image, convert it to 16 bit and then to Adobe RGB and back to 8 bit so color information is not lost in changing CMYK color.    

Now all print and web files must have embedded profiles, so make sure you save embedded profiles in each file you create.  This way you are communicating the way that file ashould appear on another system, wheather digital or print.