Basics Of Color Management - Canon ColorPASS-Z5000 Color Manual

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You need to account for the gamut of your print device when designing on a color
monitor. When printed, colors that fall outside the print device gamut are "mapped" to
printable colors. This process, referred to as gamut mapping, takes place when color
data is converted or adjusted to meet the gamut requirements of a print device.
The ColorPASS is specially designed to perform gamut mapping at high speed with
high quality results. It provides these color management features automatically, using
either built-in default settings or settings that you specify for a particular print job. For
added flexibility, the ColorPASS color management system can also be used in
combination with color management systems on Windows and Mac OS computers.

Basics of color management

The past several years have seen progress toward standardization in the field of digital
color management systems. Both the Windows and Mac OS operating systems now
support a standard format developed by the International Color Consortium (ICC).
This ICC format is implemented on Windows 95/98/Me, Windows NT 4.0, and
Windows 2000 computers in Image Color Matching (ICM) and on Mac OS
computers in ColorSync. More and more software developers are also incorporating
color management systems into high-end applications. The ColorPASS color
management system, ColorWise, supports this industry standard profile format.
A color management system, or CMS, is a "translator" between the color space of the
source image (the monitor, or a scanner, for example) and the color space of the output
device. The CMS uses a device-independent color space, such as CIELAB, as its
intermediate color space. To perform its translation, the CMS needs information about
the color space of the source image and the gamut of the print device. This
information is provided in the form of profiles, often created by the makers of the
monitor or print device. The end product of a CMS conversion is a printed document
or an image file in the gamut of a particular device.
If color matching between computer display and printed output is critical, you
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should calibrate your monitor as well as your printer. For most users, predictability of
printed color output is adequate and monitor calibration is not necessary. For
information on monitor calibration, see your Photoshop or Illustrator documentation.