downloaded Adobe ICC Color profiles not opening

Hi john,

In using the preferences calibrator, I thought I was calibrating to an icc color profile, in this case one called "iMac cmyk Calibrated.icc".

It's confusing that the function creates a new profile since no profiling is actually done. The only thing calibration does (though a very important step) is set the basic parameters of the monitor. Brightness, white point color, black point color and gain. Once the calibration is done, then you create a new profile based on that calibration. But the built-in function doesn't do that at all. I just creates a new .icc file that has the same profile information it had before, but with new LUT data that gets loaded when you select that profile to set those calibration settings.

The reason the steps are separated is because the calibration changes the profile. You can see that by simply changing the color temperature slider. Push it to a lower number, and everything gets more yellow. So that cyan that looks less aqua with a higher Kelvin number has an entirely different hue (greener), even though the profile is still displaying the same RGB values to the screen. When you increase of decrease brightness, all colors change again. Dimmer, and saturation decreases. Brighter, saturation increases. All the while you do any of these, the profile's data is still stuck on what it thinks the color should look like with the original calibration that was in use when the profiling was done.

If you use the Calibrate function only, you'll still get a different output on your prints since the OS knows you moved the calibration settings, and thereby the overall hue of the monitor. But it's not very accurate.

Display a white to black vignette on the screen and watch what happens to the gray ramp when you move the monitor's color temperature. Or, just watch this one:

When you push to a higher number, such as 9000K, it isn't just the white end that changes, the entire gray ramp all the way to black gets bluer. It's more difficult to see the black end change, but it is. If it didn't, it would be more obvious that as the tones of gray get darker, they'd still be a warmer gray while the white end was blue. That's why a calibration sets both the white and black points. So both ends of the gray ramp are the same Kelvin color, and thereby creates a consistent gray from one end to the other.

What is the relationship between the monitor calibration and the document-specified icc color profile?

Much of what I noted just now. The calibration is what determines the values of the profile. Pick any RGB value. Let's just say 142, 10, 150. A rather dark fuchsia. Create and save a small file in Photoshop with that color. Now radically change the calibration for a quick test. Create one with a white point of 4000K, and another at 8500K. Notice that the color of the fuchsia patch doesn't look anything alike as you change the calibration. Same RGB value, completely different location in L*a*b*. Another thing that would take way too long to explain.

But that's why when you change the calibration, the profile part of it is no longer valid. Since the calibration shifts the entire color balance of the monitor to a different area of L*a*b*, the RGB values are no longer aligned to their correct positions. Calibration and profile values are linked. You can't move the former without invalidating the latter.

If I were to guess, monitor calibration allows me to see accurately what the specified color will look like to the print plant and they both look the same, or nearly so, based on the color profile.

Basically, yes. Which is why if you're going to be dealing with print on a regular basis, you need to properly calibrate and profile your monitor to print standards of 5000K, 1.8 gamma. The hardware/software will guide you through that, and then it will run a series of color patches so the profile's values are aligned to that calibration.

There's only one End User set of profiles I could locate on Adobe's site. Once you go to the page and agree to the licensing terms, you download this file:

AdobeICCProfilesCS4Win_end-user.zip

If that's the one you're referring to, they're some of standard profiles many of the Adobe apps put on your Mac when you install Photoshop, Illustrator and others.

Not sure why you would want them. They have little value for most users. You get these RGB profiles:

AdobeRGB1998.icc

AppleRGB.icc

ColorMatchRGB.icc

PAL_SECAM.icc

SMPTE-C.icc

VideoHD.icc

VideoNTSC.icc

VideoPAL.icc

And these CMYK profiles:

CoatedFOGRA27.icc

CoatedFOGRA39.icc

CoatedGRACoL2006.icc

JapanColor2001Coated.icc

JapanColor2001Uncoated.icc

JapanColor2002Newspaper.icc

JapanColor2003WebCoated.icc

JapanWebCoated.icc

UncoatedFOGRA29.icc

USWebCoatedSWOP.icc

USWebUncoated.icc

WebCoatedFOGRA28.icc

WebCoatedSWOP2006Grade3.icc

WebCoatedSWOP2006Grade5.icc

To install the profiles, simply put them in the Profiles folder in your user account at:

/Users/your_account/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

Or if you want all user accounts to be able to access them, put the profiles in the root Library folder at:

/Library/ColorSync/Profiles

You'll need to enter your admin password in order to add them to this second location.

All profiles should then be available in all apps that use ICC profiles. Some may need to be closed and relaunched before they will recognize the newly added profiles.

but it was suggested I needed them for digital to print PDF Color Management.

Not sure why anyone would suggest that. I use my custom monitor profile for just about everything. It encompasses most of Adobe RGB. In some hues, it can't display the full gamut of Adobe RGB (like some really way out their saturated reds), but my monitor is capable of displaying large gamut ranges that, if I used Adobe RGB as my working color space, I'd actually be clipping off color I could be using.

Basically, as long as your monitor is fully calibrated and properly profiled (a wide gamut monitor being much preferred), using your own monitor profile as your working color space is every bit as accurate and viable as using a canned profile. After that, you just need to learn where it doesn't work. An example being Bay Photo labs. Anything I send there, I have to first convert the color of an image from my profile to Adobe RGB. Prints come back perfect. If I send them as is and they convert it, color is off - way off. MPix requires images to be in sRGB (the worst possible choice). But you have to convert your images before sending them if you want the prints to come back with the correct color. That is, they match your monitor.

A closed loop setup is always best. You are controlling color from beginning to end. I create custom profiles for everything. Scanner, monitor, and printers. Anything I print comes out as perfect as possible to the screen. The only limit is the gamut and color range the printer is capable of. Don't expect flaming bright reds to come out looking like your monitor. You'll never get that on any kind of paper.

But I've rambled on enough on that subject. It could go on for pages. 😉

The zip file never showed up on my desktop;

Unless you've manually changed where your downloads go, they should always wind up in the Documents folder of your user account. I would suspect you'll find it there. While you can setup Safari to automatically open "safe" files, it would still extract the .zip file into the Downloads folder next to the source.

I have the same question: why do I need these things?

I seriously doubt you do. The most, and really only usable one is Adobe RGB. And there's already a copy of that installed by OS X / macOS on every Mac.

Apple organized ICC anyway.

I haven't found a definitive answer on that. If you check the ICC web site, it simply says it was established in 1993 by eight industry vendors. Doesn't mention who those eight were. Though I wouldn't doubt for a moment Apple was one of them.

Why does the world need all these color profiles, wouldn't a handfull be okay?

Short answer. You only need the ones you need.

I have very few profiles on my system. Most of them get tossed as I have no need for them. I have a grand total of 11 profiles I use regularly, or occasionally. And of those, 10 are custom profiles I created for the various papers I use on an Epson 4900, and a Xerox 7500. The last one is my monitor profile. The only time I use other profiles is for the necessary conversions of prints going to Mpix or Bay Photo, or those automatically used by Premiere Pro and Encore to produce DVDs or Blu-ray disks to produce output color that is correct on a typical TV.

Canned profiles are just that - canned. The entire purpose of a profile is to tell the computer (ColorSync) how a given device produces or captures color (always defined as L*a*b* values) as a mathematical construct. So a profile I made for gloss paper on the Epson is useful because it tells the OS what gamut and color range that hardware can reproduce on that paper. My monitor profile is useful because it tells the OS exactly what gamut and color range my monitor is capable of displaying. A canned profile such as ColorMatchRGB is totally useless because it isn't a mathematical representation of any device I have here. It's meaningless.

Yes, but with the ever increasing cost of the subscription you get overseas support that sounds like they are actually calling you "under-seas" from a sub with a tin can tied to a string because they have not figured out when you add a new user to the system how to keep Cloud from requiring a complete reinstall off the web because it stops running.

Print is our biggest issue. Publishing software, Scribus in my case, allows for you to save images, say your book cover and photos therein as CMYK using built-in color sets. In Scribus color management, two seem to be labeled "Generic CMYK Profile" and "FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press" with a monitor set called "iMac CMYK Calibrated".

First things first, and I can't stress this enough. If you're going to be working on anything for published color (CMYK), your computer must be set to printing color standards. That means a monitor set to a 5000K white point, and a 1.8 gamma. The only way to do this correctly is with a hardware/software solution such as the X-Rite i1 Display Pro. The monitor calibration and profile settings in use directly affects the gray balance in Photoshop, and all color management transformation via ColorSync. You must be using print standards for your monitor to get a balanced gray for CMYK image conversions. You must get it away from the default 6500K color balance.

Once your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled, it may take you a while to get used to how it looks. Compared to the horribly bright blue of 6500K, it will look yellowish in appearance. After a few days, you will realize it's actually neutral. Meaning, the way gray images would appear in a book or magazine; black and white, not black and bright blue. Keep the brightness down, too. Go for a luminance of 80 when the software asks you to set a brightness level. You're trying to get the screen to simulate a somewhat brightly lit piece of better quality paper.


These appear in color management only, which must be activated to reach the mandated holy grail of a PDF-x-1a. Within the particular book cover, I was presented with a frightening list of names that made no sense to me so I looked for anything that contained CMYK. I choose one called "OpenOffice dot org CMYK" (sic) as one at least recognizable. You might find it useful to note that there is also a CIE-LAB CMYK.

For your PDF-X1a output, use "FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press". It's actually a pretty good CMYK color space. It comes out almost the same as "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2". This, after you've set your monitor to print standards. The conversion will not come out the same with how your monitor is set up now.

I have no idea what they're talking about with the phrase, CIE-LAB CMYK. There is no such thing. CIE-L*a*b* is the current computer mathematical model being used to describe the entire visible color spectrum humans can see. CMYK has nothing to do with L*a*b*. Not directly, that is. Any CMYK color space, just like any other ICC profile (CMYK or RGB) would be a portion of L*a*b*. Too much to get into here on that.

There is nothing labeled ICC and nothing labeled Adobe for that matter.

About the only profile you'll find anywhere with either as part of the name is AdobeRGB1998.icc. Otherwise, any profile should have the .icc file extension.


When saving/exporting to a regular PDF, the colors for background and text (photo sails through fine) are as specified in the publishing software, but smoother. By smoother I mean more subtle and harmonized--I'm envious. When saving/exporting to the required PDF-x-1a the colors are noticeably more pale and greyed, also smoother. When I first save the file as a PostScript (EPS) and save/export this as a PDF (of what type who knows) the colors are maintain as specified, but like a regular PDF's, not PDF-X's.

That's because you're going from RGB to CMYK, which has a much smaller color gamut and range than just about any RGB color space. It's limited to the specific hues of cyan, magenta and yellow inks that would be used on a press and the percentage combinations you can create with them. Anything outside of those fixed hues is impossible to reproduce without adding spot colors to the equation. The K means Key, not black. The key color can be any dark color used as the fourth hue to deepen shadows and add shape to the images. Since printing inks are translucent, even 100% (solid) coverage each of CMY on top of each other does not produce a perfect black. It's more of a dark muddy brown. So a key color is necessary to add the extra weight. Typically though, it is black ink.


I did copy my Scribus file to another Mac and choose "iMac CMYK Calibrated" and was able to actually save/export as a the PDF-x-1a with the specified colors, although deeper and harsher. This must have something to do with that monitor even though are calibrated the same since there is no change in the file. I have only one workaday Mac.

Yes, it's the current monitor calibration and profile that is causing less than desirable conversions.

I plan to make copies of all these PDF's and take them to a Signal Graphics print store to see what actually comes out on paper and seek their advice as to any differences in the printing the various ones. If I learn something useful, I'll post it. In this day and age it seems like there ought to be a better electronic way to verify this. Do you know if there is one?

I wouldn't spend the money on it until you can produce a new PDF after the monitor has been set up for print.

Does this mean they auto-install?

No, it just means the OS decompressed them from the downloaded .zip file. You still have to put them into a Profiles folder. A folder named "Adobe ICC Profiles" should be next to the .zip file. I did find the Scribus page that links to the profiles from Adobe. The most useful one to you is the included CMYK profile, USWebCoatedSWOP.icc. It will give you slightly better RGB to CMYK conversions than FOGRA27L CMYK Coated Press. USSheetfedCoated.icc is a good one, too.

I note also that you somehow have created specific color profiles for your own, probably higher-end, printers.

You can create profiles for any color printer you want, though it does require expensive hardware to do it. The i1 Profiler Basic package is about as cheap as you can go and get good results. You get the i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer and other equipment that will allow you profile monitors, printers and projectors. You wouldn't need the i1 Display Pro mentioned above if you purchased this. Creating printer profiles this way is tedious, but it works.

One of my experiments was to just print out the varying PDF's using our own home HP Laser jet. All of them came out a uniform horrifying mud, and I do mean mud.

Two things happening there. The big one being the images in your x1A PDFs have been converted to CMYK. Consumer level (cheap) inkjet printers don't know what to do with CMYK images. They are designed for RGB, which is what essentially every person uses at home. Such as the images off of your digital camera. All inkjet printers have their own conversion tables built in to produce CMYK+ prints from the incoming RGB images. Inkjet printers all use CMYK inks at minimum, but often add extra colors to improve the output range. When you feed a CMYK image to an inexpensive printer, it tries to print the CMY channels as RGB and ignore the K data. The results are mud, as you saw.


Somewhere in my rummaging for color profiles I noted that there was a color profile installed by model name for every Epson we've owned since the sixteenth century.

They love doing that, and so does Epson and Xerox. Doesn't matter what specific model you have, the installer just dumps profiles for darn near every printer they've ever made onto your computer. You can delete all of the ones that aren't for your model printer.

In Re: Apple and the ICC. I read somewhere that in 1743 Apple got on the phone and said' "you-all come over to our house out here in Cupertino, sit down an' straighten this color thing out". The source seemed authoritative, so I took it as gospel.

1743!? Steve Jobs and The Woz must have been a lot older than anyone thought. 🙂

Just your references to 5000 K, 1.8 gamma, and 80 luminescence set me off with a whole new sense of perspectives.

Explanation kind of in a nutshell:

1) 5000K - The K means Kelvin. It's a measurement of the color temperature of light. The confusing word there is temperature because you're not talking about heat. Not for a monitor, anyway. In physics, it does having meaning regarding light. A cooler star is normally yellow in appearance. A blue white star (besides being huge), are extremely hot and give off blue hue. So when you're talking about Kelvin values for a monitor, a low number like 3500 is going to cause the monitor's overall color to be very yellow. Almost orange. A high number such as 9300 is going to be very blue. 5000K is considered neutral to the human eye. That is, a perfect gray. Not yellowish (towards lower Kelvin values) and not bluish (towards higher values). It's what we consider colorless.

2) Gamma - 2.2 is what is considered the darkest point where humans can still just distinguish one very dark color from another that is very close, but slightly lighter or darker. A 1.8 gamma is more of a representation of the ink weight paper can hold before it becomes oversaturated, so it's used in the printing industry as the default gamma setting. Black is still black, but the three quarter and shadow tones are more open (lighter in color).

3) Luminance - brightness measured in lumens. Pretty straight forward. Lower numbers - dimmer. Higher numbers - brighter.

For starters I revisited System Preferences > Display >Color and discovered Option/calibrate. My first results using that tool were not of the best success, but I didn't get what I was doing.

Don't bother with that function. It is quite literally useless. You're eyeballing values and the OS has no way of seeing what's actually happening to the calibration of the screen. The OS can only guess by trying to set a built in panel to 6500K, 2.2 gamma and changing the calibration settings according to how you move the sliders around. Which would be okay if monitors never, ever changed (wear out). But they do, and so nothing you eyeball on a monitor that's more than three months old is going to be accurate. That, and it's only the calibration half of setting up a monitor. Once you move things, the original profile for the monitor is also no longer accurate.

Even so I will look into less expensive, but more exact calibration solutions.

If there's just the one item a person who needs to handle color should purchase, it should be a monitor calibrator. The one I linked to was X-Rite's most expensive colorimeter. That because it's the fastest unit. But to save about half the cost and still get a unit that does an excellent job, get the i1 ColorMunki Display. It's pretty much the same product, but has a smaller colorimeter and so takes about twice as long to finish calibrating and profiling a monitor. This is about as cheap as you can go and still get a very good device. Don't consider anything cheaper, including X-Rite's ColorMunki Smile. That is an outdated design that doesn't work well with most newer monitors.

One note, CIE-LAB CMYK was listed as a color profile in the publishing software Scribus, and I thought the l, a, b, letters might be important.

Thanks. Though I still don't understand what they could possibly mean. L*a*b* isn't a profile. It's everything. Profiles are a description of how much of a given color space is being used within L*a*b*.

Found the page on the ICC site that lists the founders. They only list the first five since Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Taligent no longer exist. Rather unfair to remove their names just because of that. They were still founders.

Adobe makes an Apple compatible product. Adobe is responsible for that product and it's support. I would ask over at Adobe since this is entirely their solution, not Apples.

Correction. I said downloads should end up in your Documents folder. Wrong. They will go to the aptly named Downloads folder.