Colour Variance
Let’s say you’ve spent hours creating something wonderful in photoshop only to discover that on somebody else’s monitor it looks nothing like you expected it would. It can be a truly horrifying experience, especially if it reveals things that desperately need to be fixed that you were just completely unaware of due to different colour, contrast and brightness settings.
So, how can you control how everyone else sees your images?
Well the short answer is….
You can’t.
Everybody has their brightness, colour and contrast set differently. Not only that but there’s a whole range of different monitors, LCD, CRT, PLASMA all made by different companies with different colour profiles. Even different browsers will display images with subtle variations to the colour and brightness. It’s completely out of your hands.
It’s frustrating that you can’t guarantee that everyone sees the same thing as you on their own computer screens but it’s comparable to music in a way. The Artists/Musicians can produce something… But they can’t control how people hear it. Whether they listen to it on a top notch expensive Audio Note system or a cheap old knackered tape deck. How the listener experiences it is completely out of their control.
So you have to let it go a little bit.
I used to worry about this issue a lot. I was really concerned that the (FF0000) red that I see on my screen is probably a whole lot different to the exact same value red that you see. Now this may not seem like a such a big deal, but when you think in terms of web design and corporate identity how do you guarantee that people see the correct colour?
Think of the RED and WHITE of VODAFONE, the PINK and BLACK of HMV, the GREEN and YELLOW of BP and the ORANGE of ORANGE! These are not colours that can be compromised.
But go to Google Image Search and type in vodafone logo and look at all the various shades of red!!!??!!
Shocking…
How about the Orange logo?
These variations are a result of people uploading images that they think are the correct colour, they possibly even look the correct colour on their monitor. I really think there should be some kind of image police to stop people from uploading such awful images.
I’m lucky enough these days to not have to be stuck using a cheap and nasty LCD like I have in the past. Now I have a mac with a 23” Cinema Display. It’s professional industry standard stuff and at least now I know that on my screen it looks how it should.
Only now, there’s another issue entirely…
Printing something so that it looks exactly the same as it does on the screen is a complicated process and there’s a pretty steep learning curve if you’re gonna attempt to understand it. I know the things that I need to know but to be honest, CYMK, RGB, colour profiles, resolution, Gamut, I have a very basic understanding of this side of things.
Luckily, for the most part a very basic understanding is all you really need because there’s a whole profession dedicated to this called pre-press.
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