ColorSync is Apple’s technology for matching color input and output on devices that handle graphics, an example of which would be having a printer give the same color balance and output as you see on your Mac’s display.
The means by which ColorSync balances color output is through ColorSync profiles, which correct for the hardware differences in color-managing devices.
These profiles are device-specific, and are stored in the ColorSync folder within the various libraries on the system (that for the user, the global library, and for the system). Since they are specific for a given device, once you have one created for a device such as a printer, then you might want to transfer this profile to another computer that also uses that device.
Unfortunately, the file names for ColorSync profiles may not be the same as the profile name seen in the system preferences, which can lead to confusion if you are trying to identify a specific one. However, there are two ways you can look up this and other details about your colorsync profiles.
ColorSync Utility
ColorSync Utility contains a number of details about your various profiles.
The easiest way for getting information on a colorsync profile is to simply open it with ColorSync Utility. This will display all the relevant color gamut and naming information for the profile:
1. Locate the desired profile in the Finder
2. Open the profile by double-clicking it
3. Select the ‘desc’ field to view its description.
The Terminal
If you are a Terminal user, then you can also get information on your colorsync profiles, by using the “sips” command. This command is the scriptable image processing system, which is used to modify information on image files as well as ColorSync profiles.
Running the sips command in the Terminal will give you information on your profiles.
There are a number of options available for the “sips” command, which can be looked up in its manual page or by running “sips –help” in the Terminal; however, to quickly get the description of a profile, perform the following steps:
1. Open the Terminal and type “sips -g description” followed by a single space.
2. Drag the profile of your choice to the Terminal window (or otherwise specify the full path to it).
3. Press Enter to execute the command.
This will output the description, or any other supported key word besides “description” to look up its corresponding property. The relevant keys can be found in the “sips” manual page.