IPA Color Management Professional Certification

Last year, the IPA introduced a new educational program aimed at certifying individuals responsible for color management and color reproduction. The IPA Color Management Professional certification program begins with an extensive course on Color Management Fundamentals. This acts as a prerequisite to three additional courses focusing on different areas of expertise: Color Managment for Photography, Color Management for Prepress and Color Management for Premedia.

These courses were developed by noted industry color experts including Dave Hunter from The Pilot Marketing Group, Lou Prestia of Prestia Color Consulting and Steve Upton with Chromix, among others.

Each course contains a series of online videos totaling 2 - 3 hours in length. After completing the videos, students take an online exam based on the information presented in the videos. The initial CMP-Fundamentals exam consists of eighty questions selected from a randomly mixed question “pool” so no two exams are alike. Students must answer 80% of the questions correctly to pass the test and become certified.

Individuals that have a good base knowledge of color management can opt for the exam-only option of the Color Management Fundamentals course. I recently took this 80 question exam and I can tell you that it was a challenge (and YES I passed, thank you). The questions spanned across all aspects of color management, and often were situational. Some questions made me scratch my head and really think it through. See a complete list of individuals that have achieved IPA CMP certification here.

                                     
If you are responsible for color reproduction in any way - from photography, design, prepress production, premedia services or any similar areas, I highly recommend pursuing color management certification. It serves as not only as a great learning experience, but also to reaffirm your knowledge level. This is the first time that the industry has had such a comprehensive program in place. I applaud the IPA and the professionals that put this course together.

If you would like to learn more about the IPA Color Management Certification program, check out their website: http://www.ipa.org/knowledge/cmp