COLOR RENDERING INTENT for graphic artists is intended to be a reference source for graphic artists seeking to understand more about color rendering intents, gray component replacement, and under color replacement in Adobe Photoshop.

Gamuts and RGB, CMYK:

RGB (Red Green & Blue) or primary (additive) color is created with devices such as computer monitors, flat bed scanners, slide scanners, slide writers, and large-screen video projectors. CMY (Cyan Magenta & Yellow) or secondary (subtractive) colors are the other basic color set. Printers use black (K) so CMY is more commonly referred to as CMYK. CMYK is almost always used by all output devices. RGB systems have a larger color gamut and can cope with more colors than the CMYK system. For example, you may be able to see a color with your monitor, but your CMYK printer will not be able to reproduce that color. An image may be sent to a device with a small color gamut, therefore we have to deal with out of gamut colors in the end process. Color Management provides a number of ways to deal with out of gamut colors, such as Rendering Intents.

A big part of output profile generation involves the setting for Black using a processes called Under Color Removal (UCR) and Gray Component Replacement (GCR).   ...READ MORE

Rendering Intents:

Gamut problems will affect color management. A lot of images from a scanner or digital camera will have colors that a printer is not capable of reproducing. If a color can not be printed, a color management system will have to find a replacement. International Color Consortium (ICC) has specified four standard color replacement schemes called rendering intents. The four intents are: perceptual, relative colorimetric, absolute colorimetric, and saturation. Within a devices profile, information for each rendering intent is stored.   ...READ MORE