User's Manual

44
ICC profiles
• Definition of ICC profiles (page 44)
• Notes on importing an ICC profile (page 44)
• Exporting to ICC profiles (page 45)
• Notes on exporting to an ICC profile (page 46)
• Importing ICC profiles (page 47)
• Viewing ICC profiles (page 47)
Definition of ICC profiles
An ICC Profile is a piece of data that defines the color and reproduction characteristics of a device.
ICC Profiles are written in a standard data format that is OS independent.
Everybody can read and write ICC profiles if they know the data format.
; Note
Esko only supports V2 ICC profiles, not V4 (2001 specification)
In order to represent a color on a device, we need to know the color's coordinates for that device. This
is done by the Color Management System. The CMS is capable of translating colors specified in a
device dependent coordinate into the coordinates for another device, thus matching colors between
an original image, scanner, monitor, printer... ColorSync is the built-in CMS for Apple computers and
is also used by some third party vendors. Colorsync 'links together' ICC-profiles to get a translation
from one device to another. This can be compared to processlinks in Color Kit. Another important
CMS is Image Color Matching (ICM) for a Windows platform.
An ICC Profile can be compared to an Esko profile since it is also a piece of data that defines the
colors of a specific device.
However, there are some important differences.
Notes on importing an ICC profile
When importing ICC profiles into Color Kit, bear in mind that the quality of the profile strongly depends
on:
• The precision of the spectrophotometer with which the profiles are made. Not all
spectrophotometers are high-end and produce accurate data. Esko has carefully selected the
accurate spectrophotometers (See: supported spectrophotometers (page 7).)