7.4

Monitor display VSPrinting
l The monitor produces the color you see on-screen with light while the printer produces color with pigment. The set of
colors, or gamut, you can produce with light is not identical to the set you can produce with pigment. Thus there are col-
ors you can produce on a monitor and not on a printer, and vice-versa.
l The monitor uses three primary colors of light (red, green, blue) to produce all the colors you see on-screen. It mixes
different amounts of each of the primaries to produce a particular color. An on-screen color is specified as three
numeric values, the first describing the amount of red, the second the amount of green, and the third the amount of
blue light to use to create the color. Thus these are often referred to as RGB (Red Blue Green) colors.
l The printer uses three primary colors of ink (cyan, magenta, yellow) and black to produce all the colors it prints.
l The set of colors you can produce with light (the RGB gamut) is larger than the set of colors you can produce with pig-
ment (the CMYK gamut). Thus monitors can produce more colors than printers.There is a significant overlap between
the two gamuts however, and, in those cases, the problem becomes how to match a color that it is possible to create
with either light or pigment, on different physical devices.
Representation and control of color in physical devices
The difficulty with physical devices is that none are stable enough to ensure a consistent representation of a given color. Phys-
ical devices for our purposes are monitors and printers.
l Monitors The same color can vary across monitors due to factors such as the phosphor specification, the calibration,
and the age of the individual monitor. Even on the same monitor the color can change as the monitor ages or loses its
calibration. The set of colors a monitor can display (its gamut) can also vary across monitors.
l Printers The same color can also vary across printers or on the same printer due to factors such as the inks a printer
uses, the amount of ink in the printer at the time you print, and the physical properties of the paper on which you print.
Color perception
Our perception of a color can change with variations in the ambient lighting. A color that appears very rich under subdued light-
ing may appear washed out under bright lighting. Our perception of a color can also change due to the colors that appear along-
side it. The same color on two different backgrounds can appear to be two different colors. Finally, two individuals may not
see the same color.
To set up color management in PlanetPress Design:
1. Start PlanetPress Design.
2. From the PlanetPress Design Button, choose Preferences to display the Preferences dialog box.
3. In the Preferences dialog box, expand Behavior, click Color, and set the color management options.
l Select Color Management Active. Note that you must select this option before you can select the monitor
and printer color profiles.
l Set Monitor Profile to the color profile for the monitor of the computer on which you are running PlanetPress
Design.
l Set Printer Profile to the color profile for the printer on which you intend to execute the document.
4. Click Close.
When you use color management profiles, PlanetPress Design attempts to display the color on your monitor as close with so it
is as close as possible to the printed result.
The following limitations apply, however:
l Since external variables such as lighting, time of day and different users can impact colors, there is no guarantee of the
result.
l Changing the color profile does not, in any way, change printed and PDFoutput colors. It is only and exclusively meant
for monitor display.
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