ICC color profile transformation

THBImage now supports ICC color profile transformation. If you enable color profile transformation ICC profiles embedded in TIFF files will be translated to your screen color profile like sRGB.

What is a ICC color profile:

Each device that outputs color has its own color schema depending on the device. Printers work with CMYK color cartridges, Scanners acquire RGB data, digital cameras produce RGB colors, the screen outputs RGB color.

Converting between these devices without any transformation results in colors that are mathematically correctly converted to the destination device but due to the physical difference between the devices a transformation is required to consider these physical device dependent differences to produce equal colors on all devices.

Therefore many device vendors offer color profiles that map colors of their device to a neutral device independent color schema.

If we now have a source and destination color profile we can transform from the source to the destination device resulting in colors that look correctly on the source and destination device.

Color Profiles are either integrated in imagefiles or come separately as icc or icm files. Such files are either ~4kb small in size or they contain a huge color look-up-table 500kb in size.

To use ICC color profiles you have to provide source and destination profiles.
If you get an imagefile from a certain device like scanner, camera it often embeds an ICC color profile. THBImage can extract it and use it as a source color profile. Currently this works for TIFF files.
The destination device normally is the screen. In common you will use the sRGB color profile for the destination.
Here is a code example the activates color transformation. It assigns our destination profile and reads the source color profile from the tiff file.

	// if we load tiff files containing color profiles we transform
	// them to the display color profile
	ie.ICCColorProfile.Apply = true;
	ie.ICCColorProfile.Display = @"P:ICCColorProfilesRGBsRGB Color Space Profile.icm"; 
	ie.LoadPictureFromFile("C:YourCMYK.tif");

Here is a code example the activates color transformation. It assigns our destination profile and uses the source color profile that you assigned.

	// if we load tiff files containing color profiles we transform
	// them to the display color profile
	ie.ICCColorProfile.Apply = true;
	ie.ICCColorProfile.Source = @"P:ICCColorProfilesRGBHPScannerProfile.icm"; 
	ie.ICCColorProfile.Display = @"P:ICCColorProfilesRGBsRGB Color Space Profile.icm";