True Colors & Metamerism

True Colors & Metamerism
Colored t-shirts

Color is not only the most plastic of all design elements, it is also the most chameleon-like. Nothing can be more frustrating than discovering that the color of your newly installed carpet doesn't match the walls, or that the glaze on your newly fired pottery is not ox-blood red, or that the colors of your web site are not what they are supposed to be on your client’s computer.

First of all, potters expect and frequently delight in color mutations. The very act of submitting wares to a trial by fire (at temperatures that frequently exceed 2100 degrees Fahrenheit/1150 degrees Celsius) is a surrender of complete control. Those who use gas kilns and raku processes frequently marvel at the results. In many eastern cultures, this process is associated with other values and spiritual beliefs.

On the other hand, web sites and carpets represent substantial investments of money and time and exist in the today’s fast-paced world. Our sanity demands at least a semblance of control or a logic for the things we can’t control.

True Web Color

Some people say that as long as the grass is green and the sky is blue, Grandma and little Billy don’t give a hoot about the colors they see on the web. That may very well be true for some, but when a corporate logo turns out green instead of teal, when a t-shirt is returned because it's not tomato red, the attitude is quite different. Web color mutations can be explained by understanding what it takes to create accurate color.

The pivotal player in true web color goes by the name of "profile." Computer color profiles specifically define how your computer sees color - or what color profiles are embedded in a graphic. In other words, it describes the color vision of a computer and/or the color vocabulary in a graphic. If I wanted you to see the specific colors (a banana yellow on a medium chocolate brown) in the graphic below

the first thing I would do is EMBED a color profile into the graphic file. This profile would define the specific shade of yellow and brown that I have used in my graphic software in my computer. Now we have two players, you and your computer’s color profile and my graphic's color profile. All that is needed is the messenger to deliver them. The web browser must be able to carry these profiles to you. Easy! But not available at this time. In spite of the fact that most designers have color management systems on their machines (and especially those that are built into the Macintosh systems), in spite of the fact that graphic software such as Photoshop can embed color profiles in web graphics, the web visitor’s profile is still an unknown and all bets are off. Furthermore, aside from plug-ins and file formats that are not fully supported, web browsers have limited capabilities to deliver the information. There are other complex and costly solutions. For example, if customers are truly dedicated to an online store, they might take the time to download the software for color accuracy at that one site, but that’s not realistic for most situations.

One of the best temporary solutions is to design all web graphics on computers that generate the best colors (as a result of fully corrected gamma and other standards). You can test your computer’s color vision at the following url: