(v13) Rendering intent

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; both Harlequin Core and Harlequin MultiRIP.

In addition to the source and destination profiles, the other essential attribute of an ICC transform is the rendering intent, which is explained in the introductory ICC color management texts. It is common for PDF jobs to explicitly set the rendering intents for each painted color.

The RIP has an extension operator, setrenderingintent, to set the rendering intent from the PostScript language, for example:

/Perceptual setrenderingintent

Any of the four ICC rendering intents may be used, that is: /RelativeColorimetric, /Perceptual, /Saturation, and /AbsoluteColorimetric. Typically, this is only used in a setup procset that sets the default rendering intent for the whole job, but it may be used in other situations.

The rendering intent will also apply, where possible, when non-ICC resources are used, for example, if a CIE-based color space and/or a CRD is used. Since these resources only have the one table encoding one intent, the only selection that can be made is for relative verses absolute intents in conjunction with the RelativeWhitePoint extension, (v13) Other CIEBased color spaces.