What Are ICC Profiles?

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A HEADS UP -- Exclusively here at Shooting Outside: An Interview with Ethan Hansen of Dry Creek Photo coming up as an addendum to this soon. Keep your eyes open & you will learn a lot more than you know now about ICC Profiles.
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Every printer manufacturer out of necessity includes a color print profile to enable their printer to print a reasonably good photograph. Some are much, much better, than others. Still no matter how good a manufacturer's profile, it will never compare to custom ICC profiles. ICC Profiles are simply put, color space tables for a printer to interpret for printing. They must always include the Manufacturer's printer model or series and the paper type one might choose, such as Glossy or Matte. And for those of you who print directly from your printer you should have few problems using these standard included profiles. Just choose the paper type & print using the software included by selecting criteria for size, color, black & white etc.

But for those with the taste for accuracy, rather than choosing the generic profiles that are out there, you'll need to look up the ICC Profiles for the paper types you like to print on. You won't find ALL photo paper suppliers offering this. But for the better photo papers you can locate them. For example at Ilford you can quickly register to receive any ICC Profile free of charge. Clearly papers such as these or Museo brand can aid in your quest for perfection. You must remember that if you are willing to take the extra effort to get better prints, you will need to take the extra steps to accomplish this. You will have to calibrate your monitor. Buying software to do this is only the first challenge. It is not difficult, but it is not for those who simply want to share or print quick photos for the family. I am not talking snapshots here.

To read more about what it takes, rather than just jumping headlong into this whole idea of what ICC Profiles are, and believe me it can become very quickly confusing, you might want to start with a most basic understanding of what this could entail, read this brief tutorial at Luminous Landscape.

Remember this in where those of you who want the very best prints will eventually end up, but before you do, start out slow and read up on this first.

NOW, after reading, start thinking about those great pictures you are going to be taking on Thanksgiving and upload to your favorite photo sharing site, to share here in my T-Day Post coming soon to a blog near you. Well here actually.

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