Printer Color Management (I)

This chapter describes the operations that the printer driver should perform to support color management. The following topics are provided:

â–  12.1 allows the use of color management

â–  12.2 Controlling Color Management

â–  12.3 Place the ICC Profile

â–  12.4 Installing ICC Profiles

12.1 Allowing Color Management

Color management can be allowed by the application or print driver. The application can use one of the following two methods to allow color management:

â–  Call SetICMMode (described in the platform's SDK documentation) to specify ICM_ON.

This method allows the use of system-controlled color management.

â–  Specify the DEVMODE structure when calling CreateDC to create a print job, and set the dmICMMethod member of the DEVMODE structure to one of DMICMMETHOD_SYSTEM, DMICMMETHOD_DRIVER or DMICMMETHOD_DEVICE.

This method allows the application to choose system-controlled, driver-controlled or device-controlled color management (assuming that the specified control type is supported).

The printer driver can allow color management by setting the dmICMMethod member of the driver's default DEVMODE structure to one of DMICMMETHOD_SYSTEM, DMICMMETHOD_DRIVER, or DMICMMETHOD_DEVICE. (If CreateDC is provided with a DEVMODE structure, the application can override the default settings. In addition, the driver is responsible for storing the user's choices for color management when executing the driver's DrvdocumentPropertySheets function).

12.2 Controlling Color Management

The printer's color management can be controlled by applications, systems (GDI), drivers, or device hardware. The driver detects which component can correctly handle color management by detecting the flags in the BRUSHOJB and XLATEOBJ structures passed to the DDI drawing function that implements it.

The following tags are defined:

Tag definition

BR_DEVICE_ICM in BRUSHOJB
Color management is performed by a driver or device

XO_DEVICE_ICM in XLATEOJB

BR_HOST_ICM in BRUSHOJB
Color management is performed by an application or system (GDI)

XO_HOST_ICM in XLATEOJB

The following topics describe the driver's support for color management:

â–  12.2.1 System Control

â–  12.2.2 Driver Control and Device Control

â–  12.2.3 Support CMYK color space

â–  12.2.4 Color Management for JPEG and PNG Images

12.2.1 System Control

System-controlled color management is the default color management type. It is also the type recommended for the printer. If color management is allowed, GDI modifies their colors before sending all DIBs, pens, brushes, and DLLs to the driver's printer graphics interface, based on the input and output color spaces and the installed ICC profile.

There is no need for ICM-specific code to be added to the printer to support system-controlled color management, unlike specifying support for the CYMK color space (if appropriate), as described in Supporting CMYK Color Space.