Color settings

A working space is an intermediate color space used to define and edit color in Adobe applications. Each color model has a working space profile associated with it. You can choose working space profiles in the Settings menu of the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.

If an object has an embedded color profile that doesn’t match the working space profile, the application uses a color management policy to determine how to handle the color data. In most cases, the default policy is to preserve the embedded profile.

Working space options

Select the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.

Determines the RGB color space of the application. In general, it’s best to choose Adobe RGB or sRGB, rather than the profile for a specific device (such as a monitor profile).

sRGB is recommended when you prepare images for the web or mobile devices, because it defines the color space of the standard monitor used to view images on the web. sRGB is also a good choice when you work with images from consumer-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use sRGB as their default color space.

Adobe RGB is recommended when you prepare documents for print, because Adobe RGB’s gamut includes some printable colors (cyans and blues in particular) that can’t be defined using sRGB. Adobe RGB is also a good choice when working with images from professional-level digital cameras, because most of these cameras use Adobe RGB as their default color space.

Determines the CMYK color space of the application. All CMYK working spaces are device-dependent, meaning that they are based on actual ink and paper combinations. The CMYK working spaces Adobe supplies are based on standard commercial print conditions.

Determines the grayscale color space of the application.

Adobe applications ship with a standard set of working space profiles that have been recommended and tested by Adobe for most color management workflows. By default, only these profiles appear in the working space menus.

About missing and mismatched color profiles

Unless specified otherwise, the document uses the working space profile associated with its color mode for creating and editing colors. However, some existing documents may not use the working space profile that you have specified, and some existing documents may not be color-managed. It is common to encounter the following exceptions to your color-managed workflow:

• You might open a document or import color data (for example, by copying and pasting or dragging and dropping) from a document that is not tagged with a profile. This is often the case when you open a document created in an application that either does not support color management or has color management turned off.

• You might open a document or import color data from a document that is tagged with a profile different from the current working space. This may be the case when you open a document that was created using different color management settings, or scanned and tagged with a scanner profile.

In either case, the application uses a color management policy to decide how to handle the color data in the document.

Color conversion options

Color conversion options let you control how the application handles the colors in a document as it moves from one color space to another. Changing these options is recommended only if you are knowledgeable about color management and very confident about the changes you make. To display conversion options, select the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.

Specifies the Color Management Module (CMM) used to map the gamut of one color space to the gamut of another. For most users, the default Adobe (ACE) engine fulfills all conversion needs.

Ensures that the shadow detail in the image is preserved by simulating the full dynamic range of the output device. Select this option if you plan to use black point compensation when printing (which is recommended in most situations).

About rendering intents

A rendering intent determines how a color management system handles color conversion from one color space to another. Different rendering intents use different rules to determine how the source colors are adjusted; for example, colors that fall inside the destination gamut may remain unchanged, or they may be adjusted to preserve the original range of visual relationships when translated to a smaller destination gamut. The result of choosing a rendering intent depends on the graphical content of documents and on the profiles used to specify color spaces. Some profiles produce identical results for different rendering intents.

You can select a rendering intent when you set color conversion options for the color management system, soft-proof colors, and print artwork:

Aims to preserve the visual relationship between colors so it’s perceived as natural to the human eye, even though the color values themselves may change. This intent is suitable for photographic images with lots of out-of-gamut colors. This is the standard rendering intent for the Japanese printing industry.

Tries to produce vivid colors in an image at the expense of color accuracy. This rendering intent is suitable for business graphics like graphs or charts, where bright saturated colors are more important than the exact relationship between colors.

Compares the extreme highlight of the source color space to that of the destination color space and shifts all colors accordingly. Out-of-gamut colors are shifted to the closest reproducible color in the destination color space. Relative Colorimetric preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. This is the standard rendering intent for printing in North America and Europe.

Leaves colors that fall inside the destination gamut unchanged. Out-of-gamut colors are clipped. No scaling of colors to destination white point is performed. This intent aims to maintain color accuracy at the expense of preserving relationships between colors and is suitable for proofing to simulate the output of a particular device. This intent is particularly useful for previewing how paper color affects printed colors.