Photography

New Color Management and Printing articles.

 
We are on a roll producing Color Management and Printing articles. Our latest batch covers several important topics, starting from “choosing the right inkjet media” to the new “Color Mode presets on Canon’s PIXMA PRO-1” to “Understanding and Installing ICC Printer Profiles” and even creating your own “custom ICC Printer profiles” with X-Rite’s i1Profiler.

If you want to learn more, make sure you reserve a place in one of our upcoming two-day workshops: “Inkjet Printing: Color Management and Calibration” and the incredibly fun “Creating Custom Photo Books with Adobe Lightroom 4.” Here is a sample book from the workshop.

Fine Art Black and White for digital photographers

Photography

The million-dollar question: Where are my ICC profiles stored?

 
The million-dollar question: Where are my ICC profiles stored? And the answer is, it depends on your Operating System (OS). When you first install your printer’s driver, a variety of standard profiles are added by default to the corresponding folder on your system. You can also download ICC profiles, or create your own custom profiles in which case, you will need to drag and drop them to the corresponding folder:

Windows 98/ME
\Windows\System\Color

Windows XP/Vista/7
\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color

Mac OS X
Username/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
or
HD/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

Now, what about Apple’s OS X 10.7? Ah, that crazy Lion…

For some odd reason, someone at Apple decided that the user library where the profiles are installed should be hidden by default, and only someone with Admin privileges should have access to it. That’s why most profile-managing and image-editing software applications (like Adobe Photoshop) that need access to the profiles are having a hard time “seeing” them.

Here’s my simplest workaround: While holding down the option key, navigate to “Go” on the menu bar, click on the ColorSync folder, and click again on the Profiles folder. Done.

I recommend dragging the (now temporarily visible) Profiles folder to your Favorites in the side bar so you can access them at any time.

apple mac os x 10.7 icc profiles issues