The International Color Consortium (ICC)  is an independent group that issues specifications aimed at helping you take the color you see in the world and accurately reproduce it on your computer monitor and on the printed page. The group offers this definition of color management and its importance in your everyday worklife.

According to ICC, a color management system works to “transform data encoded for one device (such as scanner RGB) into that for another device (such as printer CMYK) in such a way that it reproduces on print the same colors as those scanned,” the ICC says.

Where exact color matching is not possible, the ICC says it should come close, with “the result being a pleasing approximation to the original colors.”

In general, the term “color management system” is usually reserved for those systems that use the internationally accepted CIE system of color measurement as a reference, ICC says.

The CIE, or Commission International de l'Éclairage, performed groundbreaking work on color reproduction in the 1930s. It carried out a large number of experiments in which it asked human subjects to match colors under controlled lighting and viewing conditions.

The result, based on a statistical analysis of the subject’s responses, was a set of mathematical models describing human-perceived color. The color measurement specs CIE XYZ and CIE xyY are commonly used examples of these models.

For more information on CIE, go here.   To learn more about the ICC, go here.