Colour Management Active means that when your files are printed, the embedded colour space is used to adjust the colours of your files to produce prints that better reflect what the original was intended to look like.
One of the major problems that the lab faces is when we are supplied files where the files are "untagged" ie the source colour space is not identified with the file.
The source colour space is dependent on the camera and its settings, or, if you are using RAW files, the settings in your conversion program. Rather than gong into a whole lesson in camera settings and programs, suffice to say you are better to choose a system and stay with it. eg if you are going to use sRGB as your colour space then set the camera to capture in it, set photoshop to have it as the working space and ensure your files are tagged with it when they are saved.
If you are using RAW files, ensure you assign the correct profile to the files.
There is some discussion as to the best colour space to work in. We suggest that you stick with sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998 for photographic output (Street's output is effectively all photographic output.). Consult others if you are outputting to CMYK or other media.
Street's Default colour space setting.
As many of the earlier cameras did not have sophisticated colour management, a lot of files did not have any information embedded as to the source colour space (which was generally sRGB). Because of this, Street's has set the default colour space for untagged files to be sRGB.
This will produce good prints in most cases. However, if you supply us with untagged Adobe RGB 1998 files the images will look desaturated.
The 4 images below are:- sRGB, untagged sRGB, Adobe RGB (1998), Untagged Adobe RGB (1998)
Cilck on the image, then right click and save picture.
If the Adobe images both look the same then your web browser does not support colour management. and is default sRGB.
To see the problems with tagged and untagged files download the 4 images and open them on Photoshop (Version 6 or above) and, if your setup is as suggested on our colour management page, when prompted either use embedded profile or leave un colour managed (untagged files).
You can then see the difference when you assign the various profiles to the untagged files. (Use the tagged files as a reference.)