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The company I work for recently started a partnership program. Part of the program includes us sending out our logo to our partners which they will include in their websites, signs and printed materials. We had some issue with photoshop color profiles and chose to remove them in the files we sent to our partners.

Is this the correct way to do this?

Are there any other ways to insure that the colors in our logo will appear correctly when added to other company's designs?

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As Scott says, you must ensure that the web version of your image is created in sRGB, because that is the color profile used by all web browsers. Any other profile will result in undesirable color shifts.

You should not embed the profile in files destined for the web, because it adds file size without adding anything to the rendering of the image in a browser.

You should embed profiles in any files destined for print, with the exception of PDFs (which are best exported as PDF/X-1a to ensure there are no production problems). Spot colors from the Pantone or other color libraries are what they are, regardless of color profile, but it doesn't sound as if you're using spot colors this workflow.

Your challenge is to minimize any opportunities to alter your artwork, so my overall suggestion would be that you not send Photoshop files all. Use PDF/X-1a for print and 24-bit PNG (converted to sRGB before saving, using either "Perceptual" or "Relative Colorimetric" and black point compensation) for anything that is destined for on-screen viewing, whether on the web or on a digital signage screen. The PNG format doesn't include a color profile, and assumes sRGB as the output intent.

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There's certainly no problem with how you are doing it. However, you may find you get less accurate color, rather than more accurate.

The best way I've found is to always convert any image to sRGB if it is destined for the web. There is a tick box in Adobe applications Save For Web windows to do this automatically. sRGB ensures it will look the same on the widest variety of devices because many non-color managed devices/systems simply default to sRGB. If a device/system is color managed embedding the sRGB profile tells the system how to display the color. So, basically with sRGB you cover as many bases as possible. However, ultimately, anything on the web comes down to what each user is using to view the image and their own system color management settings.

In the end, with or without a color profile you shouldn't be seeing wildly different colors but there will always be some slight shift based on the device viewing the image and there's really nothing you can do to ensure an image looks 100% the same on every possible device. If you are experiencing colors which are drastically different from one vendor it may very well be that that vendor is mistakenly changing the file without understanding accurate color. After all, they won't be as particular about your brand colors as you are.

One important factor is the originating image. If you are opening a spot color or CMYK logo file and simply saving it to RGB you may be causing more of a shift than you are aware. You may find you get better results by manually creating the image with RGB colors and then saving. Often logos are color specified in CMYK, RGB and Spot so you can use the color closest to the original intended value in each color space.

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  • Thanks, both your answers seem right so you both get checkmarks.
    – Kevin
    Commented Jul 1, 2013 at 17:59

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