Hughes: Introducing the ColorHug open source colorimeter

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Plus there is no such thing as 'correct sRGB colorspace'. Colors change constantly. To think there is one set of 'correct colors' is just mistaken.

Print out a image on a piece of paper. Look at it under a incandescent light, now look at it under a floresent light, take it out in the morning sun and look at it, take it out into the afternoon sun and look at it, take it out in the evening sun and look at it. Look at with a gray back drop, now look at it with a blue back drop, etc etc.

Each time and each condition the paper will have radically different colors. Colors of everything change constantly because the colors are mental construct that are dependent on light striking a surface and shining through it.

As the light changes and our perception changes then so will the colors. Even with a monitor with a set light source behind it will have it's colors affected by the environment.

The point of color calibration is not to 'Find the correct colors' (although obviously you want your monitor to be correctly configured as much as possible). It's to try to color match a process, a work flow. So when you are working with other people and other media then you use your color calibration and color profiles to color match.

Example: if you are working with a video that is going to display output on a movie screen you can get very close to how it will appear on your monitor. Also you can make sure that when working with a dozen different people on different computers with different displays that the color red for you will be the same as them. Same thing with different inputs from different sources. All that stuff needs to be color matched.

Example 2: say you are working with a industrial printer. A industrial printer will use different sets of inks, each with different color capabilities based on how fast you want to print, what material you are printing on, and how much money you want to spend on ink. Each set of ink will have different color profiles and different colors that it's capable of representing. What makes it more difficult is that printing out test prints is prohibitively expensive sometimes. So you only have one shot to get it right. Color matching your monitor with your printer and also having a desktop layout program that will restrict the color gamuts to the correct ones is very important.

For all of this you will to be able to color calibrate all your outputs and inputs. Scanners, printers, cameras, your monitor.. each will have different capabilities and different color profiles.

it's a difficult problem that nobody has solved yet. But things like this 'colorhug' will help mitigate a lot of the issues artists have to deal with in professional environments using Linux.