ICC or the International Color Consortium comprised of eight of the leading industry vendors announced in 1993 a consistent cross platform color management system. Below is a simplified ICC system diagram, showing all the major components.

All devices in the workflow are characterized by a monitor, printer or input profile. Each profile is only valid under a specific condition. For example, a printer profile characterizing how a printer will print colors on a specific paper using a specific ink at a specified resolution. If you change any of the variables a new profile is needed. Think of a device profile as a fingerprint. Its unique and different between device models and often between devices of the same model.

A CMM, or Color Management Module then takes all the device profiles and within the connection space translates or maps gamut colors between devices. So if the module knows how your monitor displays a specific color, and at the same time it knows how the printer will print that color it can provide an accurate soft proof of how the color will print, all within an ICC savvy program like Photoshop for example. Thus you get WYSIWYG. So where do you get device profiles ?

.