Or, if your use a Kodak product, you may have seen references to ICC profiles. The International Color Consortium, a vendor organization, is the leading group in establishing standard profiles and open platform color management systems. When you calibrate your equipment, in particular your monitor, you are creating a profile of the Gamma, Brightness and Hue settings in a particular color space for your images. By mapping device dependent characteristics to a device independent color space as a common exchange language, the CMS makes profiles meaningful to devices such as your printer and other monitors viewing the same image. Gamma Anyone who has touched a digital image digitally should know about gamma.
Many people work with gamma without knowing what it actually is.
They do know that gamma is adjustable and that most monitors are set at 2.2, except Apple's, which are set at 1.8. They also know that when an image is created or modified on an Apple monitor, it appears darker when viewed on a non-Apple monitor. As a result, the apparent brightness of an image, mainly in the mid tones, will appear differently in different gamma environments. Timo Autiokari shows several examples of the effect of changing the gamma setting on the perception of images in his very helpful Accurate Image Manipulation web site. However, it is important to note while reviewing Timo's work that his discussion revolves around the printing process, which has different needs than electronic display.