In a color-managed workflow, which practice helps maintain color consistency across devices?

• A. Regular device calibration, standardized color spaces, and soft-proofing.
• B. Using the camera's auto settings.
• C. Ignoring color profiles.
• D. Shooting only in RAW.

Answer: (A)

Color consistency across devices in a color-managed workflow comes from calibrating devices, using standardized color spaces, and soft-proofing. Regular device calibration aligns monitors, printers, and other output devices with a known reference so colors read and display the same way across tools. Standardized color spaces provide a common encoding for color values, ensuring software and hardware interpret colors consistently rather than drifting between devices. Soft-proofing allows you to simulate how an image will look on the final output using the target device’s profile, so you can adjust before printing or exporting. Together, these practices keep color measurements, representations, and previews aligned from capture through final output.

Using the camera’s auto settings introduces unpredictable color decisions that can vary between shots and lighting, making cross-device color consistency hard to achieve. Ignoring color profiles removes the guardrails that keep devices on the same color reference. Shooting RAW preserves detailed color data, which is valuable for post-processing, but without proper calibration and color space management, the final output can still diverge across devices.