output intent
The output intent is the colour profile written into a document to say which press, or which screen, its colours were chosen for.
What the word means
A document may carry a profile on each picture and on each block of colour. That still does not say what the page as a whole was aimed at.
The output intent answers that one question. It names a single device — this press, this paper, this screen — and copies its profile into the file. Everything on the page is to be understood against it.
What it does on a real document
On a sheet going to a printing works, the intent names the press the colours were mixed for. The printing works opens the file, sees the name it expects, and puts the job on the machine without ringing anybody.
On an archival document the intent is what makes the colours still mean something in twenty years. The rule asks for one, and a checker refuses the file when it is missing, or when what it names does not match what the page actually uses.
Where it comes from, and why
It arrived with the first rules for print-ready files, around the turn of the 2000s, to answer the question printing works were tired of asking: what were these colours meant for. Until then the answer travelled by telephone, or on a note taped to a disc.
The archival rules took it over for a reason of their own. They ask that nothing a file needs be stored outside it, and a colour leaning on a profile kept somewhere else is exactly that.
See it on a finished document
The device a file's colours are meant for A sheet as it goes to the press The rules behind this word, and the texts they are read from
Glossary
- 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.