Rendering intents determine how colours are mapped when moving images from one colour space to another. They have a particular impact on colours which are outside the gamut of the destination colour space, be that your desktop printer or production. Using the correct rendering intent for the job is necessary in order to obtain the best results from images with embedded profiles.
To change the selected rendering intent, hold down the control key and click on the profile icon in the Layers Palette. A contextual menu appears.
Select the Rendering Intent you want to use for the selected layer or image and the change of Rendering Intent will be applied.
Note: Not all profiles implement all four Rendering Intents. All profiles will have the two Colourimetric intents but the Perceptual and Saturation intents may be missing. If you use a rendering intent with a profile that doesn’t implement it, AVA will use Relative Colourimetric intent instead.
Any changes made to profiles which are attached to layers are recorded in the History Window, therefore you can go back if the change was not necessary. To further improve the reproduction of images, you may also wish to apply Black Point Compensation.
There are four Rendering Intent modes:
Absolute Colourimetric rendering intent
AVA will reproduce the colours in the image as closely as possible to the original. All colours in the image that are within the gamut of the output device (monitor or printer) will be reproduced exactly. If the profile white point differs from the current substrate colour, white areas on the image may end up darker than the substrate or light tones may be clipped. Some types of profile (such as most scanner, digital camera and monitor profiles) do not work well in absolute mode and give a strong colour cast to the image.
Absolute Colorimetric intent is recommended for proofing CMYK profiles where you want the proof to match the original image.
Relative Colourimetric rendering intent
This mode is similar to Absolute Colorimetric mode except that the white point of the profile is scaled to that of the substrate. The effect is that ‘white’ areas of the image will be the same colour as the substrate. All of the colours in the image are modified to compensate for the differences between the profile white point and the substrate colour.
Relative Colorimetric mode would be appropriate for a design with a mix of CMYK process layers and spot colours. Using Relative Colorimetric mode ensures that the white areas in the CMYK images will match the substrate colour.
Perceptual rendering intent
In Perceptual mode, the colours in the image are modified to produce an attractive result. Colour accuracy may be sacrificed as a result. The white point in Perceptual mode is treated in a similar manner to Relative Colorimetric mode.
Perceptual mode is appropriate for applications where you have an image and want to generate a nice looking separation from it (such as for scanned images or digital photographs). It may also be useful when importing CMYK images from other applications.
Saturation rendering intent
This mode is intended for the reproduction of business graphics (like graphs), where you want the brightest, most saturated colours possible. Saturation intent is not generally used in colour managed workflows.
Note: Adobe® Photoshop®™ normally uses either Relative Colorimetric or Perceptual intent, so if you are importing graphics from a Photoshop®™ based workflow and want the colours to match you should use the appropriate mode.
All profiles have a default rendering intent. AVA will use this intent when the profile is first assigned to a layer.