The ICC Colour Management Architecture
Phil Green · 2023
The ICC profile is a container for a colour transform that precisely defines a conversion between a colour encoding and the ICC profile connection space (PCS). The ICC.1 PCS is based on D50 colorimetry and can be either XYZ or CIELAB. ICC.1 transform elements include matrices, curves and look-up tables, which are applied to the source colour encoding data in a pre-defined sequence by a colour management module (CMM). By default, transforms are media-relative, which ensures that the source white is matched to the white of the destination medium through a simple scaling of both source and destination media white colorimetry to the PCS white. Alternative styles of transform can be encoded as rendering intents. Profiles can be embedded in image file formats to enable the correct colorimetric interpretation of the image. The more recent ICC.2 specification defines a more flexible PCS and a wider range of transform elements.