[MUSIC] So we're on ICC profiles and color management, boy, does that sound very scary, but we're going to do it very simply. There's a game that children, and some adults, play called telephone. In some cultures, it's also called Chinese whispers. A group of people, usually at least four or five, arrange themselves in a line, or circle, or some sort of sequence. And one person begins the game by whispering an uncommon word, or perhaps a word that's difficult to spell, in the ear of the person next to him. That person proceeds to do the same thing, and thus the word is passed quietly from one person to another. When the word finally comes around to the original whisperer, it's usually surprisingly different. A fun time is had by all as they try to figure out at what point that word got changed, and which of the participants misunderstood the word and interpreted it differently. The game is almost guaranteed to result in a change when everyone in the room has the same level of vocabulary and speaks the same language, and has about the same intellect. Now, think about how much more difficult that game would be and to keep that word the same way all the way around, if each of the participants were different ages, perhaps. Maybe a seven-year-old brother and a four-year-old sister, with one having a much more advanced vocabulary than the other. Or even worse, what if they spoke a different language? Or had different abilities to process information? Well, that's a way of describing the problem that ICC profiles help to solve. Let's see what we mean by this analogy in terms of the colors in the picture file. And the way those colors may or may not change as they move from one display device to another. In the world of digital photography, the photographer, like an artist in any medium, might start off with what they see. Your eye is capable of discerning an immense array of colors, far more than any digital camera. Let's think about how a painter processes color. An image of the scene is transmitted from the eye to their brain. Then the artist understanding and interpretation of the colors creates a fixed image in their mind. Finally, that interpretation is acted on and applied to the technical attributes of the artist. Their eye-hand coordination and brush, and papers, and paints that they're using for display that particular day. At the end, the scene is displayed in a form that results from the system. That started with the first view of the image and all the interpretations and actions of the artist, call him the the machine, afterwards. As the photographer, you will see a scene and a similar process of recognition of significance in colors and tones occurs in your own mind. Then you photograph it, and the camera creates a digital image file. As a result of its abilities and limitations to record and display colors, which are certainly very different than your own means. You already know that the image file the camera creates consists of numbers that represent the color information that comprises the photograph. That digital image file certainly contains less information than you saw. Next, that camera image file must be translated by a computer for it to be properly displayed on a monitor. Well, the monitor is not capable of displaying all the colors that the digital camera recorded. And like the camera, may have a bias of emphasis of some colors more than others. After that, the digital file must be conveyed to a printer which has its own system for displaying colors and its own biases. As to the papers and the inks that are used to display the printers interpretation. What a mouthful. Wow. Finally, we see the print. And sometimes, we wonder whatever happened to the image that we first saw before lifting that camera to our eye. So with each step, we have devices that speak their own language, and not only different but diminishing amounts of information capable of being displayed. Without some key to unlock the meaning of the original image file. Each time it's conveyed from one device to the other, colors and tones will be lost or distorted, or altered when each device shows the picture. Such that by the time it gets to the printer. It may look quite different than the way the photographer might have expected when they first saw that scene. And then, saw it on the digital camera screen. ICC color profiles are simply a description of the capabilities of the display, or the recording device, being used to handle the full spectrum of colors. Or maybe not. We call that capacity for handling color, or not handling color, the color space of a particular device. That's usually represented by a very scary chart, such as this one, to those of us who are math challenged. The color space is simply the range of red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, and yellow colors, that the device is capable of displaying, or printing, or recording, or scanning. Color profiles are written descriptions of that space. Written in such a way that each device in the chain can understand the space that the information comes from. It's somewhat like a story profiling a person. Meant to share information about them that can be instantly translated, no matter what language the receiving device understands. Remember our Chinese whispers game? The essential thing to understand is that the appearance of color is entirely dependent on the device. And without some way to translate the way an image was formed and the way it appears on one device to the way it will appear on another. Or in the case of a printer through another, well, we're going to have disaster. Well, before your eyes start to glaze over with all this information, think about something you already know. The original device that records the image, whether it's a camera or a scanner, is capable of recording a certain range of information. And each has its own ICC color profile. You already know that a camera that is capable of recording a 100 megapixel image, such as the Hasselblad H6D is going to record more detail than a point and shoot camera. Well, substitute the phrase color space for the word detail. And you'll easily recognize that the larger the file the larger, the larger more often, and the more different the colors will be recorded, too. Every device has it's own color profile, just as it has it's own capacity for recording a quantity of pixels. The color profile then, is a description of the color characteristics embedded in an image as a result of the device that was last used. The next device in the chain to use that file, will have to be set up to display that file with and understanding of those characteristics, instead of opening it first to find out what's inside. In this sense, we can think of a color profile as a book cover. But really, sort of a magical book cover. Just as a book cover generally conveys information to the reader about the contents before the book is opened. The color profile conveys information to the device that is about to use that file before it's opened. The magic part comes from the fact that no matter what digital language the device is capable of reading, that very language will appear on the cover of the book, or the file, in this case. Every device is capable of reading the file cover, the color profile. And will be able then to adapt its actions to the information in the file, no matter what camera or scanner, or computer it came from. So what is color management? Color management is simple. It's the system, the process whereby a software based solution takes into account all the different color profiles of all the different devices that have affected the image file. From the camera, to the computer monitor, to the printer and its inks and papers. And make sure that each device understands the information in the same way to preserve the original image in a manner, such that it will be suitable for presentation. You can think of it as a translator, something that allows easy translation without any Chinese whisper type changes. Adobe Photoshop is the most widely used color management software. And most people think of it as just a tool for modifying photographs. Without realizing that if they did not have access to the color profiles and the way Photoshop relates those to the camera system, to color information and so forth. And the way that color profile relates to the monitor, well, we'd really be in deep trouble. It does a great job of acting as a translator that understands the color language of each device in the chain. But only of the photographer make sure that it has only information it needs to do its job. Adobe and other software manufacturers regularly update their products so that they have built in color profile information for the latest cameras, printers, and papers. To make it easy for photographers to update the software, to input color profiles for a paper or printer, or camera that's not already on the list. So that it can become part of that image management chain. And we'll cover that in a lesson coming up soon. As you begin the series work of printing your photographs and viewing them with accuracy, too. You want to be aware of the color profiles of all the devices in your image chain. And make sure that they're plugged into the software you're using for color management. Speaking of which, let's move on to the next lesson and the color profile related to a monitor. [MUSIC]
