Simon Ridgway Photography

When you open an image file on your computer, how do you know that the colours that your monitor are displaying are the same as the colours were in real life?

Let’s say you commission a photographer to shoot some pictures of your company’s MD standing in front of the company logo. The company logo is a particular shade of purple. Its important for branding purposes that the logo is the right colour in the photos because all the rest of the company’s material uses that colour and the whole point of branding is consistency.

So, the photographer shoots his pictures, and you receive the files and open them on your computer – but the logo looks blue. So you blame the photographer, right? Well, its possible that the photographer doesn’t work with a colour managed workflow and didn’t take care to keep the colours accurate, but its also possible that the monitor you are using to look at the pictures is not displaying the colours properly. The logo might actually be the perfect shade of purple, but if your monitor displays purple things as blue then its going to look wrong.

So, how do know who is at fault? The simplest way is to look at an industry standard colour chart on your computer’s screen and check that. I’ve got one available to download here.

This is what it looks like…

Download the image to your computer and open it in whatever software you use for viewing images.

The first thing to check is the grey bar down the left hand side. You should be able to see a difference in brightness between each of the squares. If the darkest squares appear to merge together then images will look too dark on your screen. If the lightest squares appear to merge together then images will look to bright on your screen. Try adjusting your screen’s brightness control to see if the separation between the squares can be improved.

Next have a look at the skintones of the models at the bottom. These should look natural with no strange tints or colour casts. For example, if they look a bit green or blue then somethings wrong – the people are human, not aliens!

Generally, if any of the elements of the pictures look a bit off, then its likely your screen is at fault. If you cannot improve the colours or brightness using the controls on your screen then you just have to trust that the colours are correct but your screen is not suitable for viewing them. DO NOT adjust the image file itself using Photoshop or similar software because you cannot accurately see the changes you are making.

The only way to ensure that any display shows colours accurately is to use a hardware colorimeter – a device that hangs in front of your monitor and measures the actual colours your screen is displaying. The accompanying software can then generate what is called a “colour profile” for that particular display. Using this colour profile with your operating system software will then ensure that what you see accurately represents the colour information in the image file. This is what professional photographers, designers and printers use and forms part of a “colour managed workflow”.

So, after all that techy stuff it comes down to this simple piece of advice – Unless you KNOW that your display is accurate and you KNOW how to make colour adjustments correctly, DON’T MESS WITH THE FILE! Trust your photographer and other professionals involved to get the colour right. That’s what they’re paid for.