Reinhard Zerfass
Everyone knows this or has experienced the following example at some point: a particularly worthwhile motif suddenly appears before your eyes and you automatically reach for the camera - click, click, and the picture is in the can. In this staged example, it is a particularly beautiful bird with its yellow and white plumage sitting on a branch directly in front of me as the sun sets.
When I then load the photo onto the computer, I am disappointed. The image motif does not correspond to my memories. The yellow is not so beautifully clear and bright, the green of the leaves is almost brown and the whole effect of the picture is too dark - what now? Apart from the exposure, which I can correct quite easily, what were the colours like? The yellow - brighter, more vibrant, but how? I turn and screw the sliders in my image editing software until it fits, and then off to the internet and order a poster!
After a few days, total disillusionment - the picture the postman hands me is just horrible to look at. What have I done wrong? Why are all the colours wrong now?
The problem of colour representation is complex and multi-layered. Colour theory - yes, there was something, there are the light colours, three in number, red, green and blue, from which all colours can be mixed, and then there are the earth colours, four of them light blue, magenta, yellow and black. Everything I see are light colours, even on the monitor (RGB colour space). But when I print my picture, real colour comes into play - the earth colours. So I change the colour system. For this I need an interpreter that converts my light colours as real as possible into earth colours. But isn't there a better solution - a colour profile, perhaps, that accompanies my colours from camera to print? Yes, there is, so-called ICC profiles (ICC stands for International Color Consortium). If I set this in my camera and use it in image processing and transfer to the printer, I can avoid many mistakes. But is that enough? What does it mean in practice to transport colour authentically?
We humans experience colour every day, but everyone interprets it differently. What is behind it?
