International Color Consortium


The International Color Consortium was formed in 1993 by eight vendors in order to create an open, vendor-neutral color management system which would function transparently across all operating systems and software packages.
The ICC specification, currently on version 4.3, allows for matching of color when moved between applications and operating systems, from the point of creation to the final output, whether display or print. This specification is technically identical to ISO 15076-1:2010, available from ISO.
The ICC profile describes the color attributes of a particular device or viewing requirement by defining a mapping between the source or target color space and a profile connection space.
The ICC defines the specification precisely but does not define algorithms or processing details. As such, applications or systems that work with different ICC profiles are allowed to vary.
ICC has also published a preliminary specification for iccMAX, a next-generation color management architecture with significantly expanded functionality and a choice of colorimetric, spectral, or material connection space. Details are at

ICC profile specification version

Membership

The eight founding members of the ICC were Adobe, Agfa, Apple, Kodak, Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Taligent.
Since then Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and Taligent have left the organization, and many other firms have become ICC members, including,,
Canon,
Fuji,
Fujitsu,
Heidelberg Printing Machines AG,
Hewlett–Packard,
Konica Minolta,
Kyocera,
Lexmark,
NEC,
Nikon,
Nokia,
OKI Data,
Sun Chemical,
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen,
and X-Rite.
At the beginning of 2014, ICC membership has grown to a total of 61 members, including their founding, regular, and honorary members. Aside from members of the photography, printing, and painting industry, new members from several different industries include MathWorks, Nokia, Sony Corporation, and Signazon.com.