Colour and ICC profiles

Managing colours with ICC profiles

The full range of colours contained in an image differ from what a monitor may show and vary between printing techniques and papers. To predict which of the colours will be at the edge of the printable gamut we supply ICC profiles for your reference. When the correct ICC profile is loaded into your imaging software (i.e. Photoshop) and the image is viewed on a high quality calibrated monitor the out of gamut colours can be seen.

ICC Profiles should not be used without first calibrating your monitor and only after following our Photoshop instructions.

ICC profiles will

Show you how individual colours will reproduce on a specific paper and will help you adjust these colours.

ICC profiles will NOT

Change the overall colour or density of your image. It is not a replacement for correctly calibrating your monitor.

ColourspaceUsing ICC profiles will not show you any shift in colour balance caused by a discrepancy between the white point of the monitor and the base white of the media. This isn’t a substitute for a correctly-calibrated monitor for the printer/media combination that you intend to use, it’s more of a fine-tuning tool. We have made available ICC profiles of all our media for download along with full instructions for their use.As the illustration shows, all devices and media have their own unique range of colours that they are able to reproduce, which is why 100% colour matching across all devices and media is impossible to achieve. For example, a professional studio monitor is able to show a larger range of colours than a laptop monitor.

Print viewing

It is best to view prints under daylight conditions as prints can look a different colour when viewed under non daylight balanced light sources (metamerism).

The ideal conditions for viewing prints are too bright for viewing your monitor and vice versa. Studios will usually have a separate viewing booth located away from the workstations to avoid glare.