TomasDN wrote Question 1: When I am looking at an image on a monitor in a software-program, like Windows Photo Viewer (or any other simple software program for that matter), and there is no color profile attached to the image, how does my monitor show the colors? Does all software have some sort of default-color space with which it interprets colors? Recent operating systems generally assume sRGB for images without embedded profiles. That usually works fine as long as the image actually is sRGB, but obviously if the image uses another color space it's probably going to look wrong in non-color-managed software. TomasDN wrote Then there are the device independent ICC-color spaces such as sRGB, Adobe RGB,... I assume that when I bought this computer, Apple made sure that these profiles would counter the abnormalities in my monitor. What I mean is, they actually calibrated my computer for me and made profiles of all these calibrations for the different color spaces? No, the device-independent profiles like sRGB etc. were not adapted to your display at all by Apple. They are included as is for compatibility so that, for example, the sRGB or Adobe RGB profile is present for use by any application on your Mac. They should not be applied to your monitor in Displays Preferences. A display profile should only represent the exact characteristics of your monitor. If you choose ProPhoto RGB in Displays Preferences, that does not make your display behave as a ProPhoto RGB monitor. It tells the system that your display is ProPhoto RGB, which is wrong because the hardware is technically incapable of covering all those colors. (There are no ProPhoto displays.) Those device-independent profiles are there for use with files, not displays. You will see this if you select the option "Show profiles for this display only." Now the list will probably show the one factory profile Apple did make for your display, which is probably "iMac" or "Color LCD." There may be more profiles listed if you ran your own display calibrator/profiler. It's only a good idea to apply sRGB or Adobe RGB as a display profile when you have used calibration hardware that can verify that it's exactly achieving sRGB or Adobe RGB when no other profiles are involved. But the way this is done is technically not possible with an iMac; it's a feature of some advanced non-Apple external displays. So an iMac must use a custom display profile that is not sRGB or Adobe RGB. TomasDN wrote What I do not understand is how the color settings in Photoshop work with the color profiles in the Preferences window? When I work in sRGB in Photoshop, does Photoshop actually tell my OS to use its sRGB-color profile to show the photo on the monitor? All Photoshop does is hand off the image to the system for display. Photoshop might tell the Mac, "Here's the image, it's in sRGB." The Mac system says "OK thanks, I will convert it from sRGB to the iMac display profile." If the display profile is up to date, the iMac display will show the colors as closely as it can. TomasDN wrote And if I see in the Photoshop color settings that I can choose to emulate a Fuji-filmstock, how does Photoshop communicate with my OS to make sure that what I see is correct? There is no Color Profile in my preferences-settings of my Imac for Fuji-filmstock. The reason the Fuji film stocks aren't listed in Displays Preferences is that they are not ICC color profiles! They are color lookup tables (color LUTs). They are not really for photography although they can be used for that. They are primarily intended for color-grading video clips, mostly used in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects but can be used in Photoshop to make image colors consistent with the video projects they will be used in. I think all the film stocks listed are motion picture film, not still camera film. If you applied a Fuji LUT to an image, the same rules apply. You would not apply it in Displays preferences, there is no need because again, if you are to see the colors correctly it must be converted from the document color space (Fuji) to the display color space (iMac display profile), and that happens automatically. Another reason the Fuji LUTs aren't listed in Display Preferences is that, since they aren't ICC profiles, they are not in the standard folder locations where the Mac system looks for profiles. If you want to know where all the ICC profiles are found, open Apple ColorSync Utility on your iMac and click Profiles. The Fuji LUTs are not in any of the profile folders. Where are they? You can find the Fuji LUTs and others at: /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CC 2017/Presets/3DLUTs/
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