Image's embedded profile

[pbandurian]

How can I determine what profile has been assigned to an image file? Is there some app - such as ICCProfileInspector, which enables inspection of color profiles themselves - to determine what profile has been embedded in an image file? I expect Photoshop users have a solution, but I'm not a Photoshop user.

Thanks, Peter

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me.

As you haven't said what you do use to edit images, we cannot be specific, but you may find this website, if pointed to an image on your HDD (or a web URL) may provide an answer;
http://regex.info/exif.cgi

If you try it from a large file on your HDD, it can take quite a while to upload it.

Here's an example of one of mine, it shows the ICC Profile as "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" - is that the sort of thing you wanted?

This is not my area of expertise, so for anything deeper, you'll have to rely on other members to reply - it may help them (to help you) if we knew what OS your computer used.


Could you do me a favour please?
Could you click Settings (right at the top),
then Edit Profile (on left)
and put "Peter" in the Real Name field
and where you are (roughly) in the Location field?
this helps everyone give you more personal and relevant answers - thanks in advance.

Best regards, Dave

[Mike Buckley]

To add to Dave's comments, it's possible if not likely that whatever post-processing software you use will display the color profile. If you provide the name of that software, people might be able to help you determine that.

[Manfred M]

Peter, icc profiles are not embedded in any image file. The profiles are device specific, or in the case of prints; printer and paper specific and are used in a colour managed workflow to ensure that the colours are consistently reproduced across different devices.

If you are refering to the colour space, then this is something that is embedded in the image file metadata. Any piece of software that can read the metadata file should be able to tell you which one is being used. Again, this is not necessarily going to be of any use if you are finding files posted on the internet, as colour managed browsers can only handle sRGB, so regardless what the actual intent was you will see sRGB applied. If I were to post an AdobeRGB or ProPhoto image, these would look muddy when viewed. That being said, a number of websites strip the image metadata out, so if you were to examine one of my images posted here, you would not be able to see this information as Flickr (which I use) does strip this data out.

[xpatUSA]

Peter, icc profiles are not embedded in any image file. The profiles are device specific, or in the case of prints; printer and paper specific and are used in a colour managed workflow to ensure that the colours are consistently reproduced across different devices.

If you are refering to the colour space, then this is something that is embedded in the image file metadata. Any piece of software that can read the metadata file should be able to tell you which one is being used. Again, this is not necessarily going to be of any use if you are finding files posted on the internet, as colour managed browsers can only handle sRGB, so regardless what the actual intent was you will see sRGB applied. If I were to post an AdobeRGB or ProPhoto image, these would look muddy when viewed. That being said, a number of websites strip the image metadata out, so if you were to examine one of my images posted here, you would not be able to see this information as Flickr (which I use) does strip this data out.

There might be some terminology confusion possibly.

Anyway, the popular tool for checking all the meta-data in a file is "ExifToolGUI" - Google for that.

Here is a screenshot:



I selected ALL and scrolled to the ICC tags and, rightly or wrongly, it does use the phrase "ICC profile". Some apps embed profiles, some do not, and some offer the option.

I did an experiment in RawTherapee:

Saved a file with no ICM profile: ExifTool showed no ICC tags.
Saved same file with a profile containing A2B and B2A tables: ExifTool showed it to be present.

First saved file size was 679Kb, second was 859Kb - so 180Kb of something got embedded, eh?

ExifTool by itself is a command-line utility which is made much mo' easier by downloading the GUI in addition, as you can see.

[Simon Garrett]

I'm not contradicting GrumpyDriver, but in popular use "icc profile" is often used for standard colour space descriptions as well as device profiles. The icc refer to the "sRGB Profile", for example. See http://color.org/info_profiles2.xalter.

I think of the sRGB profile as being a profile for a standard virtual device, but perhaps this is a loose use of the term "profile". Be that as it may, standard colour space "profiles" (sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB and others) are frequently embedded in image data.

To see what's embedded, I use ExifToolGUI, as others have suggested.

[pbandurian]

Thank you all for responding with your helpful suggestions. I originally responded
some time ago. It is very frustrating to write a longish response and, on
submission, have it disappear into the aether. I chose not to try again
immediately as it was late. Then we went on a little vacation, etc. Now I'll
resubmit after writing this in a local file that I can paste in! And, it seems to be
taking several tries.

I have updated my Settings per Dave's request. Regex does seem to work but,
as warned, is quite slow for large files. All my files are large.

My primary my primary editing software is now Lightroom. I expect I can get it
to identify the file's color profile or color space for me but I don't know how.

GrumpyDiver: I am aware of the difference between color profiles and color spaces
and their use. I - admittedly sloppily - tend to use them interchangeably. I am
not alone in this sloppiness as most photographers seem to use them
interchangeably. That is, unless they, in context, need to be careful of the
differences. Sorry.

To give you the full story, I am the projectionist for a photography club. Some
members of the club complain that the projected images don't look right. They say
that their images look muted compared to what they remember on their home
calibrated and profiled monitors. The projection system is carefully calibrated
and profiled. I explained to the club that I could think of two reasons for this
anomaly. One is that the submissions are not in the required color space, sRGB.
The other is that their home monitors are relatively much brighter than
the club projector. (A bright monitor will tend to encourage the maker to
produce a image file which projects dimly.) Everyone in the club insists that they
submit their image files in sRGB. Thus I needed a way to check if that is true.
After I submitted my initial request for help here, I recalled that my real photo
editor PWP (Picture Window Pro) warns if an imported image file is in a color
space different from PWP's working space. And, it reports to me what the color
space is. Problem solved. And, yes all club members submitted their images in sRGB
except the two who complained. They submitted images in aRGB and ProPhotoRGB.
.
I tried downloading and installing ExifToolGUI. I had an old version of ExifTool
installed that I'd forgotten about. It's a bit awkward to use in this era of GUIs. I
had to install a newer version to get ExifToolGUI to work. I've been spoiled and
I am no longer comfortable with command line work. ExifToolGUI seems to work
satisfactorily and is a good resource. I plan to use it. Thanks.

Again, thank you for your helpful suggestions.

Cheers, Peter

[Simon Garrett]

To give you the full story, I am the projectionist for a photography club. Some
members of the club complain that the projected images don't look right. They say
that their images look muted compared to what they remember on their home
calibrated and profiled monitors. The projection system is carefully calibrated
and profiled. I explained to the club that I could think of two reasons for this
anomaly. One is that the submissions are not in the required color space, sRGB.
The other is that their home monitors are relatively much brighter than
the club projector. (A bright monitor will tend to encourage the maker to
produce a image file which projects dimly.) Everyone in the club insists that they
submit their image files in sRGB. Thus I needed a way to check if that is true.
After I submitted my initial request for help here, I recalled that my real photo
editor PWP (Picture Window Pro) warns if an imported image file is in a color
space different from PWP's working space. And, it reports to me what the color
space is. Problem solved. And, yes all club members submitted their images in sRGB
except the two who complained. They submitted images in aRGB and ProPhotoRGB.

I can understand your problems. At our club, people submit pictures in all sorts of colour spaces (with or without embedded profiles) and at many different resolutions.

Some more reasons why the image on projectors tends to look muted in my experience:

1. The contrast range of projectors is often rather less than a monitor - pictures tend to look less punchy.
2. The colour space of projectors I've seen can sometimes be narrower than sRGB - they simply can't display the range of colours of normal monitors with a gamut approximately that of sRGB, let alone wide-gamut monitors.

Until recently, the main driver for projectors was business use, where colour accuracy and colour gamut were not of great significance. However the growth in the market for home projectors seems to be driving better colour quality HD (1920x1080) projectors (and lower price).

[pnodrog]

There might be some terminology confusion possibly.

Anyway, the popular tool for checking all the meta-data in a file is "ExifToolGUI" - Google for that.

Here is a screenshot:



I selected ALL and scrolled to the ICC tags and, rightly or wrongly, it does use the phrase "ICC profile". Some apps embed profiles, some do not, and some offer the option.

I did an experiment in RawTherapee:

Saved a file with no ICM profile: ExifTool showed no ICC tags.
Saved same file with a profile containing A2B and B2A tables: ExifTool showed it to be present.

First saved file size was 679Kb, second was 859Kb - so 180Kb of something got embedded, eh?

ExifTool by itself is a command-line utility which is made much mo' easier by downloading the GUI in addition, as you can see.

I had a bit of trouble finding the latest version until I limited the search to the last 12months. The most helpful guide to download and installing I found is at

http://www.articpost.com/best-exif-viewer-exif-remover/

Basically you download a zipped file for the viewer and another for the GUI. Extract them to a folder of your choice. At this point I found the GUI was in a sub-folder and when I ran it it did not find the tools software so I read the above article a bit more and found I needed to copy the "exiftool(-k).exe" into the same sub-folder as where "ExifToolGUI.exe" was and change "exiftool(-k).exe" name to "exiftool.exe".

After doing that running (double click) "ExifToolGUI.exe" worked properly apart that it did not save settings on closing down. I may look into that later but it is not a problem for my use. I have set up a shortcut to it on my desktop as I will not use it very often but do not want to hunt for it when I need it.

It is fairly straight forward but I may have saved someone a bit of time tracking it down.

[xpatUSA]

I had a bit of trouble finding the latest version until I limited the search to the last 12months. The most helpful guide to download and installing I found is at

http://www.articpost.com/best-exif-viewer-exif-remover/

Basically you download a zipped file for the viewer and another for the GUI. Extract them to a folder of your choice. At this point I found the GUI was in a sub-folder and when I ran it it did not find the tools software so I read the above article a bit more and found I needed to copy the "exiftool(-k).exe" into the same sub-folder as where "ExifToolGUI.exe" was and change "exiftool(-k).exe" name to "exiftool.exe".

It is fairly straight forward but I may have saved someone a bit of time tracking it down.

Well written up, that. That was my experience too and I should have mentioned it, duh.

[pnodrog]

Well written up, that. That was my experience too and I should have mentioned it, duh.

Thanks Ted, until I saw your screen shot I did not realize what was missing in my life....

Will occasionally be very useful.

[tommcana]

Offer Online Digital printing and Marketing Service around FL.