Embedding ICC profiles in image file formats

ICC profiles can be embedded in a wide range of image file formats. Embedding requirements for those file formats that do not specifically define how ICC profiles are to be embedded, such as EPS, TIFF and JFIF (JPEG), are given in Annex B of the ICC specification.

File formats that support embedding of ICC profiles and describe how profiles are to be embedded are listed below.

Portable Document Format (PDF) (ISO)

Digital Negative (DNG) (Adobe Systems Inc)

Portable Network Graphic (PNG) (W3 Consortium)

Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) (W3 Consortium)

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS4) Color Module (W3 Consortium Working Draft)

Embedding ICC profiles in baseline JPEG files is described in Annex B of the ICC specification. More information can be found at JPEG Metadata Format Specification and Usage Notes (Sun Microsystems).

Details of embedding ICC profiles in JPEG2000 files are given in ISO/IEC 15444-2 (available from ISO)

PDF and OpenXPS documents allow for images or other colour objects to have an ICC profile associated with them. Images in these document formats can also include an embedded profile within the image file, using the method of embedding defined by the image file format specification.

PDF is an open International Standard, ISO 32000-2.

PDF/X profile embedding is described in ISO 15930-3 (available from ISO). All other details of the requirements for embedding profiles in PDF/X files are as described in the PDFspecification (see above).

Details of embedding ICC profiles in OpenXPS documents is given in the Open XML Paper Specification, available from ECMA.

ICC profiles have the mime type 'application/vnd.iccprofile'. See IANA Application media types for details.