Various operating systems and software packages display millions of colors on the screen to create rich textures and color mixtures for the viewer. In order to render colors acurately, the hardware of a system needs to know how to display color through the operating system and onto the monitor. Their are a few organizing formats by which colors can be manipulated. Called color profiles, these create a standard by which colors are managed and displayed on the screen. The International Color Consortium, or ICC, creates standard profiles that can be used across multiple platforms.
Color Profiles
- There isn't a single standard for displaying colors. Different devices and different sets of hardware will often use different algorithms to display various shades and hues of colors. This fact can cause problems when translating image and color data between software and hardware, or hardware to output peripherals such as monitors and printers. In order to handle these discrepancies you can mediate how colors are processed and displayed by using color profiles for your hardware and software. Color profiles serve to normalize different hardware or software that use or manipulate color.
International Color Consortium
- The International Color Consortium serves as a standard maker in the area of color and digital color display, much like the International Standards Organization or American National Standard Institute serve to create standards for various types of hardware and software. The ICC began in 1993, created by eight software and hardware vendors to create a standard for color display. The goal of the ICC is to integrate color standards into hardware and software production through the development of ICC color profiles.
The GIMP
- The GNU Image Manipulation Program is one such piece of software that uses colors in graphic design and image manipulation. GIMP renders colors and images to the screen; users can apply filters, modifications, and color profiles. As GIMP can use and modify images from digital cameras as well as from the Web or other sources, it contains the ability to use ICC profiles to accurately portray colors in images.
ICC Profiles in Gimp
- GIMP comes loaded with one ICC color profile, called "RGB" that represents Red, Green, and Blue values, respectively. However, other devices might use other color profiles. In this case, the user can add other color profiles to GIMP by finding the appropriate ICC color profile file and importing it into the GIMP system. Then, that user can select appropriate color profiles to render particular colors from particular devices that it might not have been able to do "out of the box."
