While there was consensus that advertisers and consumers were less concerned with colour standards for online compared to print media, John Charnock, director of Print Research International, who chaired the event, warned that this could change as technology such as tablets and smartphones matured.

Charnock said: "We spent such a long time considering colour in the print sector that it seems strange there aren’t similar requirements in the electronic sector. I believe this is because a lot of the technology is new and people are more concerned with getting it working than the subtleties of colour. As this technology matures and becomes more stable people may identify subtleties and other requirements.

"For example, when wide-format first became available clients did not care about colour so much, they just wanted it big, however, as technology matured clients began to care more and more."

Other attendees suggested that the number of variables which affect how the end user views a product or advertisement online makes managing colour in digital images extremely difficult.

Ian Nunn, head of colour management at Love Europe, said: "On the press side, colour management goes into making the images right, but I don’t think you can forward that through to computer images because there are too many variables - for example, with web browsers there is no consistency - with Firefox you have to go to advanced settings to view colour properly and version 9 of Explorer is the first version to deal with colour management. How many people even have their monitors calibrated at home?"

Speaking to PrintWeek after the event, Charnock added: "With online colour management we do not necessarily need to make sure the colour is accurate for the end user, we need to demonstrate that what we are producing is more or less in the centre of where it should be, so that there is less deviation when viewed with different devices."