# About color management

Color management helps you to achieve consistent color among digital cameras, scanners, computer monitors, and printers. Each of these devices reproduces a different range of colors, called a color gamut. As you move an image from your digital camera to your monitor, and finally to a printer, the image colors shift. This shift occurs because every device has a different color gamut and thus reproduces the colors differently.

The color gamuts of different devices and documents

A.
  Lab color space (entire visible spectrum)
B.
  Documents (working space)
C.
  Devices

Color management translates the image colors so that each device can reproduce them in the same way and the colors you see on your monitor will be close to the colors in your printed image. All colors may not match exactly because the printer may not reproduce the same range of colors as the monitor.

Managing color with profiles

A.
  Profiles describe the color spaces of the input device and the document.
B.
  Using the profiles’ descriptions, the color management system identifies the document’s actual colors.
C.
  The monitor’s profile tells the color management system how to translate the numeric values into the monitor’s color space.
D.
  Using the output device’s profile, the color management system translates the document’s numeric values into the color values of the output device, so the actual colors are printed.

Related Information

- Profiling devices
- Color management tasks

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