Reviews |Survey reveals the importance of colour management

Survey reveals the importance of colour management

Survey reveals importance of colour management
News

A new survey reveals the importance of colour management and shows that 55% of photographers asked were well aware of the lasting benefit of their monitors and prints.

It might seem that we’re slightly obsessed with colour management here at camerajabber.com and you’d be right.

Getting your colour’s right all the way from the camera through to print helps to ensure that you always get what you expect.

Not only that but making sure that everything is calibrated correctly ultimately cuts down on the amount of work you have to do in the digital darkroom and going to and from the printer trying to figure out why the colours on screen just aren’t being reproduced on the printer correctly.

Colour Management isn’t tricky, and those in the know will preach the benefits, but we often wonder, do other photographers see the importance?

Datacolor has teamed up with the Leica Forum to find out exactly how essential photographers see the subject, and of course, how the process of colour management works in to their workflow.

The survey conducted by Andreas Jürgensen drew on responses from the Leica and Fuji X forums and reveals a snapshot of the communities and how they incorporate colour management into their photographic processes.

The results are quite fascinating and produced the following facts:

    • 23% of participants have a calibrated workflow, 21% do not use colour management at all
    • Of those who do, 75% use a monitor to calibrate their devices
    • 77% of participants edit their pictures in RAW on a desktop computer
    • 42% who have printed via service provider have been disappointed by the colour reproduction
    • 55% found colour management provides a better quality of printouts and a lasting image impression on monitors and printouts
    • 36% had less waste on printing, and 14% had a faster workflow

The message for those that use colour management is that it has definite benefits. We were quite surprised by the high level of photographers that have now realised that monitor calibration is essential with a return of 75% using some calibrator.

on the other hand, we weren’t so surprised by the 42% of photographers who have been disappointed by the quality of colour that they have received through an online print service.

The full report has loads of interesting facts and can be read in full at the following URL: http://bit.ly/TheLeicaForum.