4. All About Profiles: Describing Devices

If color management is as simple as we say it is in Chapter 3, Color Management, you may be wondering why you even need this book. The answer is that, while color management is simple, color reproduction is not. The various machines we use to reproduce color are prey to a host of factors that affect their behavior, and color management is blissfully unaware of them—unless they are captured in a profile.

Color management systems know nothing about the various devices they drive except for the information that’s recorded in the profiles for those devices. All the intelligence in color management systems—rendering intents, previewing capabilities, simulations—is built into the device profiles. So it’s essential ...

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