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Participating Frequently
Sep 14, 2008 5:08 PM UTC
Question

Color Management for PDFs in Acrobat

I'm preparing a PDF where all images are in AdobeRGB(98)
but without embedded profiles.
The global Output Intent is AdobeRGB(98).

1. Is this Output Intent profile embedded ?

My standard settings in Acrobat Professional 7 are:
RGB: sRGB
CMYK: ISOCoated
Gray: Black Ink ISO Coated
Output Intent overrides working spaces (checked)

In my environment the images are shown correctly,
which means that sRGB is replaced by AdobeRGB(98).

What happens for average users who have only the free
Acrobat Reader ?

2. Is there any Color Management in 'Reader' ?

Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann
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    16 replies

    Gusgsm
    Inspiring
    Sep 18, 2008 6:47 AM UTC
    Gernot,<br /><br />"1. Is this Output Intent profile embedded ?"<br /><br />In this particular PDF, the answer is 'yes'.<br /><br />I Opened the PDF with a demo of PDFCanopener and I saw, inside the DestOutputprofile:<br /><br /><pre><br /><code><br />Cos Type: Stream<br />Indirect Object:<br /> ID: 953<br /> Generation: 0<br />Stream Bytes: 281<br />Decoded Bytes: 560<br />Encoding: PDFText<br /><br /><Start Stream><br />0ADBEmntrRGB XYZ Ï<br />acspAPPLnone<br />öÖÓ-ADBE<br /><br /><br />cprtü2desc0kwtpt<br />bkpt°rTRCÄ<br />gTRCÔbTRCärXYZô<br />gXYZbXYZ<br />textCopyright 1999 Adobe Systems Incorporated<br />descAdobe RGB (1998)<br /><br /><br />XYZ óQÌXYZ <br />curv3curv3<br />curv3XYZ <br />O¥üXYZ 4 ,XYZ &1/¾<br /><End Stream><br /></code><br /></pre><br /><br />And PitStop can extract the profile.<br /><br />If you open picture by picture with Photoshop, no one has an ICC profile assigned. Same in Acrobat-PitStop: Plain RGB with no profile.<br /><br />Hope this answers question(1).<br /><br />PS. I inserted some carriage returns in the code as it seems to defile the forum display.
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    Participating Frequently
    Sep 18, 2008 5:32 AM UTC
    Larry,

    thanks for your post - very helpful.
    1. Test images, self explaining.
    2. Information that Adobe Reader is color managed
    3. Reader 9 can co-exist with Acrobat 7.
    I'll download Reader 9 and see, how the color management
    has to be parameterized.

    Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann
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    Inspiring
    Sep 17, 2008 7:32 PM UTC
    Gernot, sorry--too busy to experiment.

    I did a quick test with a gamma 1.0 rgb image and Adobe Reader 9 behaves as expected, i.e., with color management. You might want to do some screen grabs to study the issue further. Reader 9 can coexist with Acrobat 7 in Windows XP. I'll email you my test images.

    Regards, Larry
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    Participant
    May 12, 2010 6:28 AM UTC

    Can you please help me? I am trying to explore the color management in Adobe reader 9. I have a pdf X1a file with a picture that has embedded CMYK profile. In Acrobat 9, I could see the output preview with paper white simulation. Can such a simulation be done in Adobe reader 9.0?

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    Inspiring
    May 13, 2010 12:03 AM UTC

    Hello Sarkrishnan,

    I don't see any regular color management controls for the user in the Reader, let alone soft proofing controls. So I guess the answer would be no, if I understand your question correctly.

    --Larry

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    Participating Frequently
    Sep 16, 2008 3:29 PM UTC
    The official name is 'Adobe Reader'.

    Is anybody able to extract here
    http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/matrix.html
    the information, whether Adobe Reader is equipped
    with Color Management ?

    This is the PDF (2MB) with all images in AdobeRGB,
    no profiles embedded per image, but with the global
    Output Intent AdobeRGB(1998):
    http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/labproof15092008.pdf

    Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann
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