Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy and Fred Bunting is a standard work. It should be in the library of every desktop publisher, photographer and graphic designer.

Real World Color Management 2nd Edition has grown --in volume and depth. The book now covers theory more elaborate, explaining how colour influences digital work better. There’s also a better explanation of how ICC colour profiles work, and why you need them.

The authors have taken care to provide the reader with more examples, and more imagery throughout the book. This makes it a lot easier to understand what’s being said. The book also spends more attention to editing and checking existing ICC profiles with a number of software programs.

There’s one thing that I found disturbing in this otherwise must-have book. The authors cover a GretagMacbeth tool called ColorLab. The version discussed in the book is not the most recent one, and many of the menu selections and commands are downright wrong. Luckily for the readers, there is a companion site,