Color management settings: frequently asked questions

Color management systems ensure that color content is rendered everywhere as accurately as possible—including devices such as your display and your printer.

Different device types tend to possess different color characteristics and capabilities. Displays, for instance, can't show the same set of colors that a printer can reproduce. This is because of the fundamentally different processes each device uses to produce color content. Scanners and cameras have different color characteristics as well. Even different programs sometimes interpret and process colors differently. Without a consistent color management system, the same picture can look different on each of these devices. The appearance of color content also depends upon the viewing conditions (such as ambient lighting). This is because the human eye adapts differently to different conditions, even when viewing the same picture.

As a result, color management maintains the relationships within color content so that an acceptable appearance can be achieved on devices with different color capabilities and across different viewing conditions. This requires color management systems to control the relationships between the device characteristics and the viewing conditions to produce acceptable results.

A color profile is a file that describes the color characteristics of a specific device while it is in a particular state. Profiles can also carry additional information that defines viewing conditions or gamut-mapping methods. Working with your computer's color management system, color profiles help ensure that color content is acceptably rendered, regardless of device or viewing condition. Color profiles are used in a color management system to create color transforms. Programs use these color transforms to convert color from one device’s color space to another. When a new device is added to your computer, the color profile for that device is often installed automatically.

A color space is a three-dimensional model in which the hue, lightness, and chroma of colors are graphed to represent the rendering capabilities of a device.

Since the default color management settings are usually satisfactory, you should only change these settings if you have specific color management requirements that are not being met by your current settings. These options are generally meant for use by color professionals.

You might want to change your color management settings if you want to do any of these things:

• Add or remove a color profile.

• Associate one or more different color profiles with one of your devices.

• Change the default color profile for one of your devices.

• Change the system default color settings for a specific device for all users on the computer.

• Change your default rendering intent or color space default.

You can change your computer's color management settings by opening Color Management in Control Panel.

Color profiles are usually added automatically during the installation of new devices. Color profiles may also be added by color management tools, such as calibration devices for monitors. As a result, it's likely that profiles for your devices already exist. However, if you need to install a new profile, follow these steps:

A color profile represents the color characteristics of a specific device in a particular state. Any change that results in a change to the color behavior of a device might require a separate profile. In addition, profiles can be optimized for different kinds of projects. A printer might come with several profiles, for instance, each one designed for a different kind of paper or ink.

If you have more than one profile for a device installed, you can specify which profile (or profiles) to use for a specific project. To do this:

1. Open Color Management by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Hardware and Sound, and then clicking Color Management.

2. Click the Devices tab.

3. From the Device list, select the color device that you want to associate with one or more color profiles.

4. Select the Use my settings for this device check box, and then click Add.

5. In the Associate Color Profile dialog box, do one or both of the following:

   • If you want to use a color profile that’s already installed on your computer, click the color profile in the list, and then click OK.

   • If you want to use a custom color profile that isn’t installed on your computer, click Browse, locate the custom color profile that you want to use, and then click Add.

     The selected color profile (or profiles) is now associated with the device and can be used by programs that use Windows color management to describe the color characteristics of that device. If you want the newly associated color profile to be the default color profile for the selected device, click Set as Default Profile.

Note

Your picture or graphic editing program may also allow you to choose color profiles. When you make changes to the color settings in those programs, the settings are usually used in that program only.

After associating a color profile (or profiles) with a device, you can do the following with the new color device association by clicking the Profiles button in the Color Management dialog box. Any changes you make affect the color settings for the current user account and the selected device only.

• To merge the current system default color settings that the device uses with the current set of profiles that you associated with the device, click Profiles, and then click Combine my settings with system defaults.

• If you decide that you don’t want to use the color profiles that you associated with the device and want to use the system default color settings instead, click Profiles, and then click Reset my settings to the system defaults, or clear the Use my settings for this device check box.

• To save the association between the selected device and the current set of profiles that it uses, click Profiles, and then click Save associations. In the File name box, type a name for the device association, and then click Save.

  After saving the device association file, you can load it later on to go back to those color settings for the selected device. For example, you might have saved different device association files for multiple projects and want to quickly switch color settings by loading a different device association file. Each device association file contains information about which color profile was the default in that set of profiles when the file was saved.

• To load a device association file so that the selected device uses the color settings that are specified in the association file, click the Profiles button, and then click Load associations. Locate and select the saved association file, and then click Open.

If you want to change the system default colors for a specific device so that the color settings are used by all users on the computer who are using the default color settings, do the following (Note that to change the system default color settings, you need to be an administrator or a member of the Administrators group):

WCS, which stands for the Windows Color System, is an advanced color management system found in the newest versions of Windows. While supporting ICC (International Color Consortium) profile–based color management, WCS provides advanced capabilities not found in existing ICC color management systems.

Windows continues to support both WCS and ICC profiles to provide you with the greatest variety of choices for customizing color management options and color workflows.

A rendering intent determines how colors are represented when changing from one device (and consequently, color space) to another. You can think of rendering intent as a style of rendering colors; it is the approach that Windows uses to choose the right colors when displaying or printing.

Most graphics editing programs let you specify a rendering intent for an image. If your program does not, you can specify the default rendering intent that's used. There are four common rendering intents that cover the most common uses. Depending upon the rendering intent, the appearance of a picture will be different, since Windows will use a different range of available colors to render it. These are the four rendering intents in common use:

Note

The Advanced tab also allows you to specify a mapping between WCS gamut-mapping model profiles and the four common rendering intents. In general, you should only change these rendering intent mappings if you have installed third-party WCS plug-in gamut-mapping methods and you want to use those instead of the default WCS gamut mapping. Most users will never need to change these settings.