Once the color has been approved, a customer should expect the color hues, color density, color balance and dot gain to remain consistent throughout the press run. With the changes that are occurring in our industry from analog to digital workflow, color reproduction issues become critical. Color management is needed to ensure that we are able to create color images better, faster and cheaper - and not always in that order. The basic problem of matching color originates from how color images are reproduced. No printing device or color monitor can produce the range of colors our eyes can detect.
Some devices have very large color gamuts while others have limited gamuts.
Color gamut maps for different systems may overlap, but do not match. The Chromaticity Diagram on page 50 show color gamuts mapped for several color reproduction systems on a slice of three-dimensional color space. This horseshoe-shaped model of color space was proposed in 1931 by the International Commission of Illumination, known as CIE, and is based on measurement of human color perception. For more information on color space models, see Color Measurement. Consider, for example, the challenge of reproducing the color of a purple sweater in a printed catalog and also for on-screen display via the worldwide web.