

Find the folder with the plugin resources. This will display all the folders that hold GIMP’s information, so just look in there for the one called Plugins. In the left column, find the Folders menu and click on it. While these instructions are based on use of a PC, the general steps are the same for Mac or Unix based systems. Click on the GIMP menu and choose Preferences. WARNING! GIMP really doesn’t like it if you move this file after the initial load, so be happy with where you put it. For this example, I created a folder on my desktop called icc to use as an example. Download your appropriate file and copy the file named AdobeRGB1998.icc to a handy location on your system.

The ICC Profile for Adobe 1998 RGB, used in this example, can be found here on Adobe’s site (Windows, Mac and Linux versions). Please don’t start another “Gamut War!” in the comments section 🙂 ) This article is about showing you how to use any ICC profile you’d like in GIMP and then the choice can be yours. It’s not necessary to use the Pro Photo RGB gamut for all your editing, Adobe 1998 RGB does a pretty good job. And while the full range of the Pro Photo RGB gamut can’t be faithfully reproduced on most consumer monitors today, using a larger gamut does aid in more accurate color printing. Using a gamut that allows for a larger color representation allows for more accurate colors when printing. As a simple means of diagramming this, the image at left, from the Adobe whitepaper A Color Managed Raw Workflow by Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser, shows how each gamut can reproduce only a certain segment of the total visible color spectrum. While this color space works well for images you wish to view on a screen, its color gamut (range of colors) is more lacking than, say, Adobe 1998 or Pro Photo. By default, GIMP comes with one ICC (International Color Consortium) profile preloaded and that is sRGB.
