Operation Manual

The accuracy of your display and printer’s ColorSync profile is critical to ensuring accurate
color reproduction.
Aperture is a powerful digital image adjustment application, but its power is limited to
the accuracy of the devices that display and print your images. This appendix provides
information about color calibrating cameras, displays, and printers. Whether your images
are printed on a desktop inkjet printer or by a professional lab, calibrating your display
and print devices and using custom profiles ensure predictable colors in your prints every
time.
This appendix covers the following:
• An Overview of Color Management (p. 859)
• Calibrating Your Camera (p. 862)
• Calibrating and Profiling Your Display (p. 863)
• Calibrating and Profiling Your Printer (p. 864)
An Overview of Color Management
Maintaining calibrated displays and printers is essential to good color management. Every
display and printer is unique. As these devices age, environmental conditions, system
configurations, and changes in materials such as inks and paper affect the devices’ ability
to reproduce color. Changes in the way a device reproduces color over time are known
as drift. Maintaining good color management ensures that when you make adjustments
to the colors in your images in Aperture, those colors are faithfully reproduced on your
display screen and on the printed page.
What Is a Device’s Gamut?
The range of colors an individual color device is capable of reproducing is known as its
gamut. Because of the differences in gamuts between devices, such as displays and
printers, these devices are incapable of reproducing exactly the same range of colors. In
fact, two displays of the same model made by the same manufacturer have distinct
gamuts. Ink types and paper stock can also affect a printer’s gamut. Likewise, the age of
a display and how frequently it’s used can affect its gamut.
859
Calibrating Your Aperture System
Appendix
A