ICC Profiles

ICC stands for international colour consortium. An ICC profile is the colour ID of a device. It contains two essential information:

• The colour space of the particular device, so all the colours can be displayed or printed

• the colour 'defects' off this device. In the case of photoshop for example, reading the ICC profile of a particular monitor, Photoshop knows how to fix the colours so they are correctly displayed.

An ICC profile is therefore a short file linked to a colour reproduction device. Each device must have its own ICC profile. It contains many different pieces of information about the colours of that device. It is also described as the colour ID of a device.

The ICC profile device on the device. It could be a of an input device such as a camera, scanner and so on,  or of an output device like a printer. 

Does an image contain a profile or a space?

when an image leaves the camera, it contains the profile of this camera but it is instantly and automatically converted into a neutral colour space. 

In fact there is hardly a difference between an ICC profile and a colour space.

These are two different aspects of the same thing which may, however, contain more or less information. It is a bit like a cylinder, either you look at it from the top and you say that it is a circle, or you look at it from the side and you say it is a rectangle.