Evaluating the Quality of Commercial ICC Color Management Software

The concepts and technology for an open color management system such as that specified by the International Color Consortium (ICC) have been around for a number of years. The adoption of this workflow by the graphic arts industry has been slow. A major contribution to the lack of popularity is that the quality and standards part of the ICC workflow is unregulated and the average user is unable to independently assess the quality of profiles and profile making software. This paper describes a process to evaluate the quality of ICC profiles and suggests that a simple, meaningful merit figure be established. A quality metric can be useful for two reasons. Firstly, it can provide feedback on how well a device has been characterized and therefore how good the device is likely to be in a color managed workflow. Secondly, a universally defined merit figure will allow the comparison of results across manufacturers. If vendor A is very good at making scanner profiles and vendor B is good with printer profiles, then the user can make informed choices appropriate for their workflow. If we are able to establish some standards for profiling, this will help to raise the quality of profiling software, assist user choice and lead to a greater acceptance of ICC color management in the graphic arts and