Color profile

In color management, an ICC profile is a set of data that characterizes a color input or output device, or a color space, according to standards promulgated by the International Color Consortium (ICC). Profiles describe the color attributes of a particular device or viewing requirement by defining a mapping between the device source or target color space and a profile connection space (PCS). This PCS is either CIELAB (L*a*b*) or CIEXYZ. Mappings may be specified using tables, to which interpolation is applied, or through a series of parameters for transformations.

Every device that captures or displays color can be profiled. Some manufacturers provide profiles for their products, and there are several products that allow an end-user to generate his or her own color profiles, typically through the use of a tristimulus colorimeter or preferably a spectrophotometer.

The ICC defines the format precisely but does not define algorithms or processing details. This means there is room for variation between different applications and systems that work with ICC profiles. Since late 2010, the current version of the specification is 4.3.

ICC has also published a preliminary specification for iccMAX, a next-generation color management architecture with significantly expanded functionality and a choice of colorimetric, spectral or material connection space. Details are at http://www.color.org/iccmax/

To see how this works in practice, suppose we have a particular RGB and CMYK color space, and want to convert from this RGB to that CMYK. The first step is to obtain the two ICC profiles concerned. To perform the conversion, each RGB triplet is first converted to the Profile connection space (PCS) using the RGB profile. If necessary the PCS is converted between CIELAB and CIEXYZ, a well defined transformation. Then the PCS is converted to the four values of C,M,Y,K required using the second profile.

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