Colour profile

Whether smartphone, monitor, printer or digital camera - technical devices display colours individually. Depending on the device class, colour spaces are individually registered and ultimately displayed. In order to ensure uniform colour management across different electronic devices, the International colour Consortium (ICC) has developed a universal, international standard format for colour profiles. A standard ICC profile is therefore a standardised data set to ensure colour matching. This data record reflects the colour space of a colour input or colour reproduction device, such as a monitor, printer or scanner. In this way, the colour profile should enable uniform colour reproduction of a template, regardless of the output device.

What do colour profiles do?

A colour profile is used to translate colours from one colour space to another colour space without affecting the colour fidelity of the source document. The aim of these profiles is to achieve unchanged colour reproduction on all output devices. The colours are synchronised from device to device so that they look as identical as possible. For example, with an original image that was photographed with a digital camera, a predominantly constant colour reproduction can be displayed as similarly as possible in the further course, for example on a computer monitor, or printed out in the same colour by a printer.

What colour profiles are there?

The most well-known colour profiles include the Adobe RGB 1998 and sRGB IEC 611966-2.1 profiles:

• Adobe RGB 1998: The Adobe RGB colour space is an RGB colour space that can display the widest range of colours on a monitor. This colour profile makes the colours of an image appear strong and bright on the monitor. However, the colours cannot be fully reproduced in quadruple printing.
• sRGB IEC 611966-2.1: This colour space has established itself as a universal profile, since this profile represents the colour space that can at least be displayed on all digital devices. Furthermore, it corresponds to the maximum reproduction of colours in quadruple printing. This colour profile is used to achieve a constant colour result. With the media-neutral colour profile, images can be used without any colour differences for both digital and analogue printing.

colour profiles are further differentiated between input profiles (convert RGB into connection colour space), output profiles (convert into RGB and CMYK) and devicelink profiles. This is a special form of ICC profile that does not have to be converted from a connecting colour space within the CMYK colour space, rather each colour value is converted directly into a specific colour value of the target colour space.

Integrate colour profiles into Adobe programs

colour profiles can be easily integrated into Adobe programs such as InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator. To integrate the sRGB IEC 611966-2.1 profile into the program, open the menu and select the path Edit/colour Settings/Working colour Spaces RGB. If you don't already have a special file open, the colour profile will be saved as a preset in the graphics program.

If you have already opened an image file in Photoshop, you can activate the image profile setting at the bottom left of the image and check which colour profile has been integrated. If you want to assign a colour profile to an image afterwards, proceed as follows: Click on Edit and assign profile (not convert to profile) in the menu. Select the RGB working space and sRGB IEC 611966-2.1.