Color Management for Photographers

CHAPTER 5

Building Camera Profiles

In Chapter 4, I discussed how scanners create RGB files, which require an ICC profile to define the data for use within a color-managed environment. Digital cameras are no different in this regard. A digital camera, however, is a capture device that is quite different from a scanner. Scanners are quite simple and consistent in how they record what is placed in front of their sensors. Digital cameras have the entire visible world before them that they attempt to reproduce, whereas scanners only need to capture the colors and tone in film or prints. With digital cameras, there are a multitude of settings and options—different lens and F-stops, different illuminants, different tonal ranges—to try to capture a phenomena ...