This article describes an issue with some ColorSync profiles which may not appear in the ColorSync Control Panel. This error can occur even if the profile is properly installed. The solution is to use the ColorSync Profile First Aid 2.6 utility posted to Apple Software Updates.

Overview

ColorSync 2.6 is the first release of the software which implements full support for Unicode information which is stored in the desc tag of the Profile. Supporting this allows it to work with Unicode based Operating Systems.

If a profile is no longer showing up in the Control Panel after installing ColorSync 2.6, you should contact the developer who created the Profile or download the Profile First Aid utility from the Apple Software Updates Web site at http://www.apple.com/swupdates .

Details

The desc tag of a profile, as defined by the ICC (International Color Consortium, http://www.color.org ), contains up to three strings. The first is a required 7-bit roman ASCII string. The second is an optional localized Unicode string. The third, also optional, is a localized string in Mac script-code format. Applications typically use one of the available strings to show the name of profiles in a list or pop-up menu. The ICC definition of the 'desc' tag requires that all three strings must be null terminated and that all three strings are preceded by a character count that includes the null terminator. It also worth noting that for the Unicode string, the character count must not be confused with a byte count because each Unicode character requires two bytes.

Previous releases of ColorSync only made partial use of this tag. ColorSync 2.6 is the first release of the technology that was designed to run both on Mac OS and Windows. Since Mac script-code format strings are not usable on Windows, ColorSync clients need to have access to the localized Unicode string.

The remedy for Profiles created without a Unicode tag is to repair the affected profiles.