Web Color Calibration Issues
By Lynda Weinman
One of the problems with color on computer screens is that few monitors are calibrated consistently with one another. Shades of a color often vary wildly from computer to computer, and from platform to platform. (If you've ever owned two television sets, you've witnessed this same phenomenon.) Anyone who works for a company with more than one computer knows that the colors shift between systems -- even between identical operating systems and identical hardware.
Inconsistent color calibration is a distressing problem for Web designers who expect the colors they've picked to look the same on everyone's system. Macs, PCs, SGIs, and Suns all have different color cards and monitors, and none of them is calibrated with the others.
The problem of unpredictable color is currently being addressed in a number of ways by hardware and software manufacturers. There are two camps working on two different but ultimately compatible strategies. The first is sRGB (standard Red Green Blue), an alternative to the familiar RGB that proposes a specific and consistent calibration of RGB settings for computer display. (It will also apply to print and film calibration, but that doesn't concern us Web folks.) The second, ICC, involves the use of color profiles, which travel along with a file and specify the calibration assumptions used for that file, thereby instructing the device (printer or screen) to display colors consistently.
What Is sRGB?
Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard proposed a new color space standard called sRGB on August 5, 1996.
