Assigning, tagging, converting, and embedding ICC profiles in Photoshop

The question I’m asked most often is, “Do these socks make me look fat?” Another question that I’m often asked, but is not nearly as weird is, “What’s the difference between assigning, tagging, converting and embedding an ICC profile in Photoshop?”

I’m glad you asked. Here is the answer….

Assigning a Profile
When you assign a profile in Photoshop, you are telling the program the meaning of the RGB or CMYK values. For example, you are telling Photoshop what specific shade of blue is represented by 46R 169G 232B. When you assign a profile, you do not change any RGB or CMYK values in the file, only the way in which those values are rendered to your display within Photoshop. To say it another way, you are changing the appearance of those values, not the values themselves. When you use the Assign Profile function in Photoshop (found under Edit) you can also remove a tagged profile by selectingDon’t Color Manage This Document.