Color Management for Web Designers
A recent design project of mine uses a whole slew of charcoal greys with some very subtle differences between them. It was essential that these differences came through in a browser as well as they did in Photoshop, and saving to jpg/png/gif can certainly make a mess out of your colors if you’re not careful. Usually, I don’t worry too much about this and just tell Photoshop not to manage my colors at all, and I use the Selective color option when using the Save For Web function. For my pile of grays it just wasn’t working out as well as I’d like, so I did a little looking around and found this great color management tutorial at Athletics.
From the article:
For years I was confused about color management/profiles, always chose to ignore them, and chose the “Don’t Color Manage This Document” option in Photoshop. I figured that it didn’t apply to what I was doing. And even after I began to understand how color management worked, I resisted using it — I would force my monitor to use the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 profile, thereby eliminating the conflict between my monitor profile and actual working space.
That could’ve come from my own mouth, it’s exactly how I’ve handled things in the past. Not any more though – now my color profiles are working perfectly and I’m much happier for it. It’s a great article, give it a read.
