Patent ID: 7315385

Claim:
A method of performing color processing to output color data to an image processing unit, comprising the steps of: acquiring spectral data which indicates an input color; acquiring characteristic information of the image processing unit; determining a color data format of color data in accordance with the acquired characteristic information of the image processing unit to output the color data to the image processing unit; generating the color data having the determined color data format from the acquired spectral data; and outputting the generated color data to the image processing unit, wherein the color data format includes a spectral data format and a color component format which indicates a color using a plurality of color component data, and wherein said generating step includes calculating the plurality of color component data from the spectral data when the color component format is determined as the color data format in said determining step, and said outputting step includes outputting the acquired spectral data to the image processing unit when the spectral data format is determined as the color data format in said determining step.