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Introduction
Color is all around us. And it’s often important (you look healthy!; is this stove hot?). While not life-
threatening, color is also a very important part of many of today’s digital workflows—in product
design, entertainment, broadcasting, and advertising. Further, as the quality and economics of tools
for desktop publishing improve, the use of color is increasingly commonplace in consumer digital
workflows, from printing photographs to creating brochures for small businesses.
However, maintaining color predictability across a workflow, which necessarily employs multiple
devices and media (e.g., digital cameras, scanners, workstation displays, printers, cinema and
video), is so difficult that it often becomes an afterthought—or is ignored altogether. Artists and
designers need to know that the colors they see at their display will accurately be reflected in their
end product, whether it’s an animated film, a product (or its packaging), a video, or a printed
advertisement.
In early 2007, Hewlett-Packard introduced HP DreamColor—a set of technologies and use models
that provide accuracy, predictability, and ease of use for color reproduction systems. HP DreamColor
combines HP technologies with existing color management tools to provide outstanding color
reproduction throughout a digital workflow. Importantly, HP DreamColor technologies remove the
complexity involved in producing accurate and predicable color across a series of digital devices.
Built into a series of applications and devices—displays, printers, and presses—the technologies
streamline the process, allowing graphic arts professionals to focus on results instead of process.
This paper provides a brief overview of working with a digital color workflow, with a focus on the HP
DreamColor LP2480zx Professional Display. The HP DreamColor LP2480zx display is the world’s
only color-critical 24-inch diagonal widescreen LCD display based on the HP DreamColor technology.
It is the first affordable CRT replacement for color-critical applications that provides billion-color
accuracy—from vision through production.
