How Profiles are Used

There are two forms of colour profile - generic and custom. Custom profiles are written for a specific printer by a colour management specialist. A generic profile is one that is written to work on all printers of a certain type, for example an Epson 1290. The potential downfall of generic profiles is that they cannot take into account the inherent differences between 1290 printers. This is an area into which Lyson has been doing a great deal of research.

ICC profiles are stored in a designated folder and are used by ICC-savvy applications. Apple developed an application called ColorSync to first make use of profiling technology (www.apple.com/colorsync) and Microsoft followed suit – developing ICM (Integrated Colour Management) in place of ColorSync. These system-level applications are basically huge number-crunching machines, using the look-up tables in the profile to get the best colour from your image.

Profiles can be used on any platform; they tend to be suffixed .icc for Mac and .icm for PC but as it is an open system, either format should work on either platform.

- A monitor profile sits at system level and is available for ICC-savvy applications to use.

- Input profiles are usually ‘tagged’ onto an image either when it is created, or when it is opened in Photoshop.

- Output profiles are either used for permanent conversion to a particular output process, or in a more temporary manner, for example; printing to a desktop inkjet from Photoshop.