Corel DESIGNER Help | Install, load, and embed color profiles

Install, load, and embed color profiles

To ensure color accuracy, a color management system needs ICC-compliant profiles for monitors, input devices, external monitors, output devices, and documents.

• Monitor color profiles — define the color space that is used by your monitor to display document colors. Corel DESIGNER uses the primary monitor profile that is assigned by the operating system. The monitor profile is very important for color accuracy. For more information, see Is my monitor displaying the correct colors?.

• Input device color profiles — used by input devices such as scanners and digital cameras. These color profiles define which colors can be captured by specific input devices.

• Display color profiles — include monitor profiles that are not associated with your monitor in the operating system. These color profiles are especially useful for soft-proofing documents for monitors that are not connected to your computer.

• Output device color profiles — define the color space of output devices such as desktop printers and printing presses. The color management system uses these profiles to map accurately document colors to the colors of the output device.

• Document color profiles — define the RGB, CMYK, and grayscale colors of a document. Documents that contain color profiles are known as "tagged."

Finding color profiles

Many color profiles are installed with your application or can be generated with profiling software. Manufacturers of monitors, scanners, digital cameras, and printers also provide color profiles. In addition, you can access color profiles from websites such as:

• http://www.color.org/findprofile.xalter — This website of the International Color Consortium (ICC) can help you find commonly used standard color profiles.

• http://www.eci.org/doku.php?id=en:downloads — This website of the European Color Initiative (ECI) provides standard ISO profiles as well as profiles that are specific to Europe

• http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm — This website provides ICC profiles for many different types of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitors to help you display consistent colors. However, if color accuracy is essential for your workflow, you should calibrate and profile your monitor instead of relying on readily available monitor profiles. For more information, see Is my monitor displaying the correct colors?.

Installing and loading color profiles

If you don’t have the necessary color profile, you can install it, or you can load it within the application. Installing a color profile adds it to the Color folder of the operating system; loading a color profile adds it to the Color folder of the application. CorelDRAW Technical Suite can access color profiles from both Color folders.

Embedding color profiles

When you save or export a document to a file format that supports color profiles, the color profiles are embedded in the file by default. Embedding a color profile attaches the color profile to the document to ensure that the same colors you used are shared with anyone who views or prints the document.

To load a color profile

1 Click Tools

Color Management.

2 Click the Default tab.

3 Choose Load color profiles from the RGB profile, CMYK profile, or Grayscale profile list boxes.

4 In the Open dialog box, navigate to the color profile.

After you load a color profile, you can also access it from the Color Proofing docker, Print dialog box, and Document tab of the Color Management settings dialog box.

Note that you can load a color profile of any color mode from any list box: RGB profile, CMYK profile, or Grayscale profile. However, after you load the profile, you can access it only from the list box of the respective color mode. For example, you can load an RGB color profile from the CMYK profile list box, but you can access the profile only from the RGB profile list box.

You can also load a color profile from the Document tab of the Color Management settings dialog box.

To embed a color profile

1 Click File, and then click one of the following commands:

• Save as

• Export For

Web

2 In the dialog box that appears, enable the Embed color profiles check box.

When you save or export a file to the Corel DESIGNER (DES) or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) file format, you can embed up to three color profiles.

Embedding a color profile increases the file size of a document. To avoid increasing the file size unnecessarily, Corel DESIGNER embeds only color profiles for colors that are used in the document. For example, if your document contains only RGB objects, only the RGB color profile will be embedded.