What is color management?

In simple terms, it means getting accurate color. For many years, our color department has created ICC profiles for each of our dye-sub printers. An ICC profile is like a color filter-you feed it your color data and it changes the color values so that you get accurate color on the substrates. ICC profiles are the industry standard way of managing scanners, monitors, and printers.

When we print, we print two types of things. The first is raster images like a photograph. With an ICC profile, these images should look great. The second is spot or vector colors. For these, your common-sense approach might be to use your monitor to make color selections. This turns out to be a disaster, as every monitor is different, and to believe you have the magic monitor that displays accurate color is crazy. I operate a dual monitor system with nice monitors, and they are not even close to each other with colors. So, what I recommend is that you print a color chart and sublimate it and then use it as your guide to matching colors.

—Condé