Practical Guide to Digital Color Management

The methods and tools for color management in (digital) image processing often seem complicated and digital content creation applications are full of different parameters, which seem to vary a lot from one to another. As a result, color management is not always mastered; very often the user loses control over the colors and can’t achieve the desired look. This field, although very technical, is however not as complicated as it seems, and this document aims to explain and vulgarize the issues related to color management in image processing, and is aimed to anyone dealing with this problem in the production of digital images. The author, Nicolas Dufresne is an expert in compositing and color grading. After several years of experience as head compositing and chief editor, he also moved towards software development; he notably developed his own media encoder, DuME, and a pipeline automation and production management framework, Ramses. It was these experiences that allowed him to deepen his knowledge of colors, and ultimately share it in this document.