Those that do may or may not install the profile automatically when you install the driver if they don’t, it’s up to you to install it manually. It merely opens the door to using ICC profiles.Īny given scanner, camera, monitor, or printer may or may not come with an ICC profile. But this operating system support doesn’t automatically give you color management. You’ll find support for ICC profiles in both Apple’s Macintosh operating systems (by way of ColorSync 2 and later) and in Microsoft Windows 98 and later (through ICM 2.0 image color matching ICM 1.0 in Windows 95 also supported ICC profiles, but only in a limited way). Most of these limitations are tangential to this discussion they are discussed in articles on the ICC Web site, including the paper ICC Achievements and Challenges at However it is worth noting that because ICC profiles are less than perfect, many professionals and service bureaus, particularly those working with printed CMYK output as their final destination, prefer staying with the tried and true methods that predate ICC Profiles. In particular, the PCS doesn’t define all the parameters it should ideally define, and some of the things that it does define are defined ambiguously. (You should also be aware that there are some limitations to ICC profiles. But it’s important to understand that the reality of using ICC profiles is a bit messy. In short, the profile connection space effectively serves as the basis for universal translation of colors.Īt least, that’s the essence of how ICC profiles work. And with the profile in hand, a program or operating system that supports ICC profiles can map the colors from one device to another. The ICC profile for any given input or output device (camera, scanner, monitor, or printer) describes what the color information for that device means in terms of the profile connection space, and gives the transforms to and from that space.īy adding the profile information to an image file, the profile can also describe what the color information in that file means. This profile connection space provides what you might think of as a common language for colors. With the PCS defined, it first becomes possible to define a profile for each device in terms of that space. The viewing environment is a standard ANSI PH-2.30 viewing booth with a D50 illuminant - a daylight light source equivalent to a 5000 degree color temperature. The PCS describes an idealized reflective print on a paper that is a perfect, non-selective diffuser, with colorants (Read: dyes or inks) that have a large dynamic range and color gamut.
The route taken was, first, to define a profile connection space (PCS), which explicitly describes relevant parameters for describing colors. The essential goal was to define a standard for color management. The International Color Consortium (ICC) was formed in 1993 as the ColorSync Consortium, with Apple Computer as the driving force, and including Sun, SGI, Microsoft, Adobe, Agfa, and Kodak.
ICC profiles are meant to provide a standard approach to the professional’s color management needs. If you were a photographer who dealt with two or more service bureaus, for example, you would have to maintain a separate closed-loop calibration for each service bureau. Traditionally this has meant relying on closed-loop calibration - calibrating one specific piece of equipment with another - and on proprietary color management schemes that vary from one product to the next. Historically, professionals in such areas as graphic arts, photography, and prepress work have been the groups most concerned with color management in digital photos, graphics, and the like. The short form is that ICC Profiles are for professionals, sRGB for consumers, and scRGB for home-savvy ‘prosumers.’ But, of course, there’s a lot more to it than that. As such, it helps to know what each of these tools was designed for. The best way to understand the relationship between ICC profiles, sRBG, and scRGB is as complementary tools performing similar tasks under different conditions - the same way that a paring knife, a steak knife, and a bread knife are all cutting tools, with each one working best for a different kind of cutting. This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page.