Details:
Summary:
Distributed digital media need color management just as much as traditional printing does. However, no tools or practices exist for managing color on the World Wide Web. Consider a GIF image in a page of HTML on the World Wide Web. Pixel colors in the image are implicitly tied to characteristics --such as phosphor chromaticity, gamma, and white point--of the device on which it was created. Unless the display device miraculously happens to have exactly the same characteristics, image color is not preserved. Color management can solve this problem, even though the color characteristics of the display system are not, and cannot be, known at the time the Web page is created. A technique is presented to embed in the GIF image an International Color Consortium device color profile describing the source device. Armed with this and an ICC profile for the display device, the Web browser can then create and display a new GIF image in the device color space of the display device. The benefits of applying this technique and some of the remaining pitfalls are discussed. Color management can solve this problem, even though the color characteristics of the display system are not, and cannot be, known at the time the Web page is created. A technique is presented to embed in the GIF image an International Color Consortium device color profile describing the source device. Armed with this and an ICC profile for the display device, the Web browser can then create and display a new GIF image in the device color space of the display device. The benefits of applying this technique and some of the remaining pitfalls are discussed.