In many cases, color-matching problems arise simply because we're trying to piece together a solution to link hardware and software we've already purchased. Chances are you bought your camera or camcorder without a thought to color-space support or how thoroughly it populates EXIF metadata. And you're probably reading this column on some fancy flat-panel display that you wanted for its bright, saturated images and thin profile. In the process of trying to link all these disparate unknowns, how do you know what's to blame when the colors don't come out right?

I've always considered the monitor to be one of the most important elements of any computer system; yeah, I care about speeds and feeds, but when you come right down to it, the display is the one component you're always using. For working with photos and videos, the display is more than just important--it's the central hub of any color-management system. Why not the printer or the capture device? Because the right monitor will always have a larger gamut than any other device in your imaging chain. It's simply easier to produce a lot of transmissive colors (where light passes through the primaries to your eyes) than a lot of reflective ones (where your eye sees the light that bounces off them). The largest gamut device should always be the center of your color-management strategy--you can always use various techniques to compress the displayed gamut, but you can't expand it.

CRT, LCD, RGB, whee!
Here's the disappointment: The right monitor is rarely a fashionable, skinny little LCD. It's usually a fat, desk-hogging, old-fashioned CRT. Yes, LCDs have gotten much better for graphics work, but using them can be an uphill battle; all the adjustments you need to make for working with images run counter to the LCD's natural tendency to display the brightest, most saturated colors possible. (Two interesting takes on the subject come from David English, a frequent contributor of ours, in CRT's Last Stand? and Seàn Captain's LCD Palette Wins Over Some CRT Loyalists.) In a nutshell, most LCDs are far harder to calibrate--many of them don't even offer the appropriate controls--and tend to be hopelessly nonuniform. If you're using one, take a look at the swatches below and shift your viewing angle a bit, both horizontally and vertically. If the colors change, the display isn't suitable for photo work.

So if you use an LCD and your print and display colors are different--or worse, they're the same, and both hideous--you're probably staring right at the problem.

To complicate matters, most of the automatic color matching that goes on among devices uses the sRGB color space. (Don't know what a color space is? Read my previous column.) Why is that a problem? Well, take a look at this:

These three images are identical. On the left is what it looks like rendered using the sRGB color space, the middle swatch using Adobe RGB, and the right one with ColorMatch RGB. That last one most closely represents the correct version.

If you can't see any difference between the three, then either your monitor or your eyes are very bad. I'd replace one and get the other checked, ASAP.

Note how the colors in the sRGB swatch are blatantly wrong. More subtle, the transitions between colors are compressed, though not so badly that there's an obviously abrupt one. The border between blue and purple is the worst in all three; those are also some of the hardest colors for a printer to reproduce. The colors in the Adobe RGB and ColorMatch RGB swatches are significantly closer to correct, but notice how much more of a gradient there is in the ColorMatch version.

Now think of what that color-space conversion must do to your photos--ick. But, thankfully, the monitor display doesn't change the underlying image data, it simply manipulates the data stream going through your graphics card. And you can prevent your software from changing the space if you use a reasonably flexible package. However, many mainstream capture devices--such as point-and-shoot cameras and low-end scanners--do map the data to the sRGB space before they save it. So with those, you're even starting with a degraded image.

Operating-system gripes
To be fair, sRGB isn't a bad space; we've just outgrown it. HP and Microsoft developed it several years ago to make color matching transparent across devices that had much smaller gamuts and so that it could run on much slower PCs. But Microsoft has never considered color as serious an issue as Apple, so it's no wonder Windows still lags years behind the Mac OS in that regard. (Are you still running Windows 98? Upgrade to Windows XP. Now. If you're working with images or video, XP is superior on many levels, including color and memory management and camera and camcorder support. Why are you still sitting there?) Microsoft's plans for Longhorn will address some of the disparities, but that's not slated to ship for a while.

sRGB is the default color space for all graphics devices under Windows. As a result, much of color matching under Windows is about circumventing the defaults.

Making the best of it
At this point, if you're convinced you need a better display, check out our monitor buying guide. In addition to that general advice, there are some capabilities specific to photo and video work that you'll also need to look for. For one, it needs to offer control over color temperature, with 9,300K, 6,500K, and 5,000K presets, at the very least. A neutral gray bezel helps prevent optical color illusions. It needs to have a relatively broad range of values between the highest and lowest brightness and contrast levels. And it must be able to produce a neutral gray scale. The latter also requires a decent graphics adapter that can adequately control the colors. Personally, I think the NEC-Mitsubishi Diamond Pro line offers the best combination of quality and price.

If you're serious about your color management, invest in a color calibrator--such as MonacoOptix, which uses X-Rite hardware; GretagMacbeth's Eye-One Display or Eye-One Photo; or ColorVision's Spyder--as well. It's a device that measures the values that your monitor can produce and makes sure that it's displaying as many as it can and doing so consistently. Calibrators come with software that can generate ICC profiles that you integrate into your color-matching system.

And the next time a manufacturer of a capture or display device promises a spectrum of 3 billion colors, ask yourself: Which ones?