The embedded ICC profile

The ICC profile the library embeds in a PDF/A file.

Not a page: a colour profile. Every file meant for archiving has to carry a profile describing the device its colours are meant for, and this is the one the library builds when none is supplied. It is offered here as a file of its own so it can be inspected.

The library's own tests can only say one thing: the file looks right to whoever has just written it. Whether it really is an ICC profile — and whether that profile is really sRGB rather than something wearing its name — is a question for specialist software, and this file is what gets handed to it.

What this example shows

  • A complete sRGB profile built by the library, not shipped with it.
  • The profile every PDF/A file gets when none is named.
  • A download rather than a page: inspect it with specialist software.

The code, in full

The same document is written twice, once in each language. Both files are shown in full, with the code coloured on the server, and can be copied in one click.

The document itself

The document this example writes, ready to open.

Open the document in English

Read the Rust source Read the Python source

This sample is a colour profile, not a page. Download it to inspect it.

Download ICC profile

Examples near this one

Grey, screen and printing colours

Swatches in each of the three ways to say a colour — a grey as one number, a screen colour as three, a printing colour as four inks — each captioned with the instruction actually written into the file, and one mid-grey said three ways.

Colour the document defines

The same six colours said as bare numbers and then read through the sRGB profile the file carries, plus a ramp from light to dark and a sweep of hues in CIE L*a*b*: colour that still means the same thing on another screen and on a press.

Inks on plates of their own

Two inks the press carries on a plate of their own, each at ten strengths, a piece of work set in both, and the crosses used to line the plates up — drawn in an ink every plate answers to.

Several plates at once, each at a strength of its own

Eight choices of plate among the four usual inks, each with the small program that shows it printed underneath, and two inks the press carries itself used together, every strength of one against every strength of the other.

A chart of colours, and a drawing that names places in it

A chart of house colours the file carries, and a drawing whose sixteen numbers are places in that chart rather than colours. The same drawing is shown twice through two charts: repainting a whole brand is one table, not every drawing.

One hatch, laid down in as many colours as the page asks for

One pattern that states no colour of its own, laid down in five colours and in five strengths of one press ink: the fill says what colour to lay it down in. Beside them, the same hatch made of patterns that carry their own colours, which is one pattern per colour.

Every example, by subject

Glossary

PDF/A
A PDF made to be readable in twenty years' time. Everything it needs is inside the file — the fonts, the colours, the description of what it is — so nothing it depends on can go missing later. Public bodies and archives ask for it by name.
colour profile
A file that says what a colour actually looks like. Without one, the same red is one red on your screen and another on a press. A document meant for print carries the profile its colours were chosen against.