What's New in Version 1.0 of WCS

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Version 1.0 of Image Color Management (ICM) was delivered in Microsoft Windows 95, and provides basic color management capabilities within Windows device contexts.

ICM version 2.0 is included in Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, and Windows XP and includes a variety of new functions that implement color management outside of device contexts. These new functions are suitable for more demanding color management requirements, and give applications greater control over the color-management process.

Additional functionality is included in the Windows Vista release of Microsoft Windows.

  • choice of static/monolithic and dynamic/modular CMM/Profile workflow
    • static provided by HeidelbergerDruckmaschinen in Win98 ICM2, dynamic provided by Canon Inc. using Canon's Kyuanos technology
    • baseline device, color appearance, and gamut mapping model profiles,
    • black generation support,
    • black preservation support,
    • High dynamic range support,
    • floating point/greater than 16 bits per channel precision,
    • default wide gamut working space profile support,
    • flexibility to control objective intra-device characteristics separate from inter-device characteristics,
    • ability to control single gamut mapping algorithm between two devices,
    • support for mapping source device primaries to destination primaries in a color managed workflow,
  • choice of binary and text color profile formats
    • binary conforming to ICC TIFF-tagged-based profile format and text using XML schemas
  • ICC Version 4 support,
  • central color management control panel,
  • legacy compatibility maintained for applications and devices,
  • extensibility via 3rd party plug-in device models and gamut mapping models,
  • support for advanced device/gamut mapping by enabling direct communication between DM and GMM plugins,
  • static (ICM2) CMM now defaults to Relative Colorimetric intent instead of Absolute Colorimetric intent.