ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4, I discussed how scanners create RGB files, which require an ICC profile to define the data for use within a color-managed environment. Digital cameras are no different in this regard. A digital camera, however, is a capture device that is quite different from a scanner. Scanners are quite simple and consistent in how they record what is placed in front of their sensors. Digital cameras have the entire visible world before them that they attempt to reproduce, whereas scanners only need to capture the colors and tone in film or prints. With digital cameras, there are a multitude of settings and options-different lens and F-stops, different illuminants, different tonal ranges-to try to capture a phenomena known as metamerism (see the sidebar, “Metamerism”). This makes producing a useful ICC profile a difficult, and some would say impossible, task. The fact remains that we do need some descriptor for the color files we get from these devices. Photoshop and other ICC-savvy applications don’t know when an image being viewed and edited comes from a scanned piece of film or a digital camera.
