ICC Profiles may seem complicated and mysterious, but once understood, they are the easiest and fastest way to ensure accurate color matching between the different components of your workflow (i.e.) camera, monitor, scanner, printer. We use a profiled and color managed printer, and this guide is intended to help advanced (or picky) customers use it to its fullest potential.

As the name suggests, a color profile is simply a...well...a profile of what absolute color values a device is capable of and what absolute color (from a standardized reference) is actually produced for any given input value (i.e.) RGB 255,0,0. Naturally, different printers will produce different results when told to print their reddest red. A custom profile will know what that red is really going to look like. The same principle applies to any image handling device, be it camera, monitor, or whatever.

"OK, so a profile's a profile, so now how do I use it?" I'm glad you asked. Let's start with the camera. Most digital cameras when shooting in jpeg mode will automatically convert the raw camera color values to the jpeg image color values and tag the image with the SRGB color profile. Another common option is the Adobe RGB profile. Both of these are what are known as working space profiles. They're the form your image should be in for all editing and viewing on a computer. Because the working space profile has defined absolute colors for each pixel value, and all digital cameras are different, there has to be a conversion to make the values of the raw camera data fit the absolute color descriptions of the working space. This conversion is typically done within the camera using an internal profile that you never know about or see. This internal profile is built by the manufacturer, and because a specific camera model isn't likely to vary too much from one camera to another, it usually does a fairly good job if you have your white balance set properly. I recommend custom white balance for any color-critical circumstances that permit it. It is possible to custom profile a camera, but because it usually isn't necessary, I won't take time to discuss it here.

Now for the working space. As mentioned before, this is the profile for your image while you're using it on your computer and editing it. There are several working spaces to choose from and pros and cons to each, which I won't take time to discuss here. SRGB is the default profile for Windows PC's and will be assumed if your image doesn't have a tagged or embedded profile. AdobeRGB is my personal favorite, but it and all profiles other than SRGB will not display properly in cheap editing programs or Windows picture viewer (because these programs don't read the embedded profile and assume SRGB.) Photoshop and the more expensive editors will display other profiles properly.

Now for the monitor. I said Photoshop and other good programs will display the image properly, but that's only if they have a profiled monitor to deal with and monitors do require custom profiling for good results. This requires a device that mounts on your monitor and reads different color patches from which it generates a profile. See the Drycreek photo link below for reviews and recommendations on monitor profilers. They're not that expensive and I highly recommend them. Most monitor profiling software will automatically adjust your monitor to make SRGB images look good (or fair at least) in any program and also set the new profile as your default monitor profile. Programs such as Photoshop will read the default monitor profile and will then be able to display your images accurately.

And finally the printer. First let me say that few home or consumer level printers come with acceptable color profiles, if any at all. Also, any cheap printer profiling software or any that relies on a flatbed scanner to build the profile will not yield acceptable results either (the voice of experience). So you're pretty well doomed to either buy expensive custom printer profiling software and an expensive colorimeter or buy a professional level printer (such as the Epson 9800) that comes with good profiles. One more option is to use a third party custom profiling company. Or, of course, you could just send your images to our profiled photo lab and let us worry about the printing step (that's what you're here for anyway, right?)

Once you have a printer profile and your monitor is profiled, you can do what's known as soft proofing. This tells your monitor to simulate what your image will look like when it's actually printed. Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "Why shouldn't it look right already if my monitor is profiled and I'm sending it to be printed at a profiled lab?" Well the reason is that printers aren't capable of printing all the colors your monitor is capable of displaying. Soft proofing gives a more realistic representation of what you'll actually get from your printer. To soft proof in Photoshop, you need to first have your printer profile saved to your computer (See the link below for our printer profiles). For Windows XP, simply right click the profile and chose the "Install Profile" option. Then in Photoshop, go to View, Proof Setup, Custom. Under "Device to Simulate" choose the printer profile. If you don't see it, close and reopen Photoshop. If it's still not there, it may not be a valid profile. Under "Rendering Intent" choose "Relative Colorimetric". Checking the "Simulate Paper" option will generally provide a more accurate proof, but you will likely lose contrast. Do not check the "Black Point Compensation" option. You can then save these settings for easier retrieval later by clicking the "save" button. This should make it an option under view, proof setup. Make sure there is a check mark by the name you chose for your settings, and you're ready to soft proof by simply pressing Ctrl+Y or choosing proof colors from the View menu. The beauty of soft proofing is that it does not actually apply the printer profile to your image or change any pixel values.

For printing at Digipics, you're done at this point. send your images in your working space profile and do not convert them to our printer profile -- it is for soft proofing only. Please be aware that if you're using a working space other than SRGB, you must upload your images using the "standard" option or your profile will not be preserved and we'll receive an untagged image that is assumed to be SRGB.

For printing directly from Photoshop, choose the "print with preview" option and under color handling choose "let Photoshop determine colors." Then choose the proper printer profile and again use "perceptual" and "black point compensation". To prepare the image for printing in a non profile-conscious program, you need to choose the convert to profile option (under the edit menu on newer versions and the image menu on older) and convert the image to the printer profile. Use convert and not assign and avoid any further editing on the image.

This is intended as a basic summary for using ICC profiles. You can find more info on using profiles at our sister site, www.thephototec.com

DigiPics printer profile for sizes up to 12x36: Noritsu Profile
For sizes 16x20 and larger: Epson Profile