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Color settings

  1. Acrobat User Guide
  2. Introduction to Acrobat
    1. Access Acrobat from desktop, mobile, web
    2. Introducing the new Acrobat experience
    3. What's new in Acrobat
    4. Keyboard shortcuts
    5. System Requirements
  3. Workspace
    1. Workspace basics
    2. Opening and viewing PDFs
      1. Opening PDFs
      2. Navigating PDF pages
      3. Viewing PDF preferences
      4. Adjusting PDF views
      5. Enable thumbnail preview of PDFs
      6. Display PDF in browser
    3. Working with online storage accounts
      1. Access files from Box
      2. Access files from Dropbox
      3. Access files from OneDrive
      4. Access files from SharePoint
      5. Access files from Google Drive
    4. Acrobat and macOS
    5. Acrobat notifications
    6. Grids, guides, and measurements in PDFs
    7. Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs
  4. Creating PDFs
    1. Overview of PDF creation
    2. Create PDFs with Acrobat
    3. Create PDFs with PDFMaker
    4. Using the Adobe PDF printer
    5. Converting web pages to PDF
    6. Creating PDFs with Acrobat Distiller
    7. Adobe PDF conversion settings
    8. PDF fonts
  5. Editing PDFs
    1. Edit text in PDFs
    2. Edit images or objects in a PDF
    3. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    4. Edit scanned PDFs
    5. Enhance document photos captured using a mobile camera
    6. Optimizing PDFs
    7. PDF properties and metadata
    8. Links and attachments in PDFs
    9. PDF layers
    10. Page thumbnails and bookmarks in PDFs
    11. PDFs converted to web pages
    12. Setting up PDFs for a presentation
    13. PDF articles
    14. Geospatial PDFs
    15. Applying actions and scripts to PDFs
    16. Change the default font for adding text
    17. Delete pages from a PDF
  6. Scan and OCR
    1. Scan documents to PDF
    2. Enhance document photos
    3. Troubleshoot scanner issues when scanning using Acrobat
  7. Forms
    1. PDF forms basics
    2. Create a form from scratch in Acrobat
    3. Create and distribute PDF forms
    4. Fill in PDF forms
    5. PDF form field properties
    6. Fill and sign PDF forms
    7. Setting action buttons in PDF forms
    8. Publishing interactive PDF web forms
    9. PDF form field basics
    10. PDF barcode form fields
    11. Collect and manage PDF form data
    12. About forms tracker
    13. PDF forms help
    14. Send PDF forms to recipients using email or an internal server
  8. Combining files
    1. Combine or merge files into single PDF
    2. Rotate, move, delete, and renumber PDF pages
    3. Add headers, footers, and Bates numbering to PDFs
    4. Crop PDF pages
    5. Add watermarks to PDFs
    6. Add backgrounds to PDFs
    7. Working with component files in a PDF Portfolio
    8. Publish and share PDF Portfolios
    9. Overview of PDF Portfolios
    10. Create and customize PDF Portfolios
  9. Sharing, reviews, and commenting
    1. Share and track PDFs online
    2. Mark up text with edits
    3. Preparing for a PDF review
    4. Starting a PDF review
    5. Hosting shared reviews on SharePoint or Office 365 sites
    6. Participating in a PDF review
    7. Add comments to PDFs
    8. Adding a stamp to a PDF
    9. Approval workflows
    10. Managing comments | view, reply, print
    11. Importing and exporting comments
    12. Tracking and managing PDF reviews
  10. Saving and exporting PDFs
    1. Saving PDFs
    2. Convert PDF to Word
    3. Convert PDF to PPTX
    4. Convert PDF to XLSX or XML
    5. Convert PDF to JPG
    6. Convert PDF to PNG
    7. Convert or export PDFs to other file formats
    8. File format options for PDF export
    9. Reusing PDF content
  11. Security
    1. Enhanced security setting for PDFs
    2. Securing PDFs with passwords
    3. Manage Digital IDs
    4. Securing PDFs with certificates
    5. Opening secured PDFs
    6. Removing sensitive content from PDFs
    7. Setting up security policies for PDFs
    8. Choosing a security method for PDFs
    9. Security warnings when a PDF opens
    10. Securing PDFs with Adobe Experience Manager
    11. Protected View feature for PDFs
    12. Overview of security in Acrobat and PDFs
    13. JavaScripts in PDFs as a security risk
    14. Attachments as security risks
    15. Allow or block links in PDFs
  12. Electronic signatures
    1. Sign PDF documents
    2. Capture your signature on mobile and use it everywhere
    3. Send documents for e-signatures
    4. Create a web form
    5. Request e-signatures in bulk
    6. Collect online payments
    7. Brand your account
    8. About certificate signatures
    9. Certificate-based signatures
    10. Validating digital signatures
    11. Adobe Approved Trust List
    12. Manage trusted identities
  13. Printing
    1. Basic PDF printing tasks
    2. Print Booklets and PDF Portfolios
    3. Advanced PDF print settings
    4. Print to PDF
    5. Printing color PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    6. Printing PDFs in custom sizes
  14. Accessibility, tags, and reflow
    1. Create and verify PDF accessibility
    2. Accessibility features in PDFs
    3. Reading Order tool for PDFs
    4. Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features
    5. Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels
    6. Creating accessible PDFs
    7. Cloud-based auto-tagging
  15. Searching and indexing
    1. Creating PDF indexes
    2. Searching PDFs
  16. Multimedia and 3D models
    1. Add audio, video, and interactive objects to PDFs
    2. Adding 3D models to PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
    3. Displaying 3D models in PDFs
    4. Interacting with 3D models
    5. Measuring 3D objects in PDFs
    6. Setting 3D views in PDFs
    7. Enable 3D content in PDF
    8. Adding multimedia to PDFs
    9. Commenting on 3D designs in PDFs
    10. Playing video, audio, and multimedia formats in PDFs
    11. Add comments to videos
  17. Print production tools (Acrobat Pro)
    1. Print production tools overview
    2. Printer marks and hairlines
    3. Previewing output
    4. Transparency flattening
    5. Color conversion and ink management
    6. Trapping color
  18. Preflight (Acrobat Pro)
    1. PDF/X-, PDF/A-, and PDF/E-compliant files
    2. Preflight profiles
    3. Advanced preflight inspections
    4. Preflight reports
    5. Viewing preflight results, objects, and resources
    6. Output intents in PDFs
    7. Correcting problem areas with the Preflight tool
    8. Automating document analysis with droplets or preflight actions
    9. Analyzing documents with the Preflight tool
    10. Additional checks in the Preflight tool
    11. Preflight libraries
    12. Preflight variables
  19. Color management
    1. Keeping colors consistent
    2. Color settings
    3. Color-managing documents
    4. Working with color profiles
    5. Understanding color management

Before you begin

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In the new experience, the tools appear on the left side of the screen.

About color working spaces

A working space is an intermediate color space used to define and edit color in Adobe applications. Each color model has a working space profile associated with it. You can choose working space profiles in the Settings menu of the Color Management category of the Preferences dialog box.

If an object has an embedded color profile that doesn’t match the working space profile, the application uses a color management policy to determine how to handle the color data. In most cases, the default policy is to preserve the embedded profile.

Working space options

Open Acrobat and select the Acrobat menu (macOS) or the hamburger menu     (Windows) from the upper left. Select Preferences, and then select the Color Management category.

Note:

To view a description of any profile, select the profile. The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.

RGB

Determines the RGB color space of the application. Generally, it’s best to choose Adobe RGB or sRGB, rather than the profile for a specific device (such as a monitor profile).

sRGB is recommended when you prepare images for the web or mobile devices because it defines the color space of the standard monitor used to view images on the web. sRGB is also a good choice when you work with images from consumer-level digital cameras because most cameras use sRGB as their default color space.

Adobe RGB is recommended when you prepare documents for print because Adobe RGB’s gamut includes some printable colors (cyans and blues in particular) that can’t be defined using sRGB. Adobe RGB is also a good choice when working with images from professional-level digital cameras because most cameras use it as their default color space.

CMYK

Determines the CMYK color space of the application. All CMYK working spaces are device-dependent, meaning that they are based on actual ink and paper combinations. The CMYK working spaces Adobe supplies are based on standard commercial print conditions.

Grayscale

Determines the grayscale color space of the application.

Note:

You can use the color space in an embedded output color space for viewing and printing. For more information on output intents, see Color conversion and ink management (Acrobat Pro).

Adobe applications ship with a standard set of working space profiles recommended and tested by Adobe for most color management workflows. By default, only these profiles appear in the working space menus.

About missing and mismatched color profiles

Unless specified otherwise, the document uses the working space profile associated with its color mode for creating and editing colors. However, some existing documents may not use the working space profile that you have specified, and some existing documents may not be color-managed. It's common to encounter the following exceptions to your color-managed workflow:

  • You might open a document or import color data (for example, copying and pasting or dragging and dropping) from a document that isn't tagged with a profile. This is often the case when you open a document created in an application that either does not support color management or has color management turned off.

  • You might open a document or import color data from a document tagged with a profile different from the current working space. This may be when you open a document created using different color management settings or scanned and tagged with a scanner profile.

In either case, the application uses a color management policy to decide how to handle the color data in the document.

Color conversion options

Color conversion options let you control how the application handles the colors in a document as it moves from one color space to another. Changing these options is recommended only if you're knowledgeable about color management and very confident about the changes you make. To display conversion options, select Acrobat at the upper-left, select Preferences, and then select the Color Management category.

Engine

Specifies the Color Management Module (CMM) used to map the gamut of one color space to the gamut of another. For most users, the default Adobe (ACE) engine fulfills all conversion needs.

Note:

To view a description of an engine or intent option, select the option. The description appears at the bottom of the dialog box.

Use Black Point Compensation

Ensures that the shadow detail in the image is preserved by simulating the full dynamic range of the output device. Select this option if you plan to use black point compensation when printing (which is recommended in most situations).

About rendering intents

A rendering intent determines how a color management system handles color conversion from one color space to another. Different rendering intents use different rules to determine how the source colors are adjusted; for example, colors that fall inside the destination gamut may remain unchanged or be adjusted to preserve the original range of visual relationships when translated to a smaller destination gamut. The result of choosing a rendering intent depends on the graphical content of documents and on the profiles used to specify color spaces. Some profiles produce identical results for different rendering intents.

Note:

In general, it's best to use the default rendering intent for the selected color setting, which Adobe has tested to meet industry standards. For example, if you choose a color setting for North America or Europe, the default rendering intent is Relative Colorimetric. If you choose a color setting for Japan, the default rendering intent is Perceptual.

You can select a rendering intent when you set color conversion options for the color management system, soft-proof colors, and print artwork:

Perceptual

Aims to preserve the visual relationship between colors so it’s perceived as natural to the human eye, even though the color values may change. This intent is suitable for photographic images with lots of out-of-gamut colors. This is the standard rendering intent for the Japanese printing industry.

Saturation

Tries to produce vivid colors in an image at the expense of color accuracy. This rendering intent suits business graphics like graphs or charts, where bright saturated colors are more important than the exact relationship between colors.

Relative Colorimetric

Compares the extreme highlight of the source color space to that of the destination color space and shifts all colors accordingly. Out-of-gamut colors are shifted to the closest reproducible color in the destination color space. Relative Colorimetric preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. This is the standard rendering intent for printing in North America and Europe.

Absolute Colorimetric

Leaves colors that fall inside the destination gamut unchanged. Out-of-gamut colors are clipped. No scaling of colors to the destination white point is performed. This intent aims to maintain color accuracy at the expense of preserving relationships between colors and is suitable for proofing to simulate the output of a particular device. This intent is particularly useful for previewing how paper color affects printed colors.

 Adobe

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