Gamut and rendering intent

Every device has a gamut, a range of colors or shades of colors that it can display or print. Some devices have larger gamuts than others; some devices have gamuts that are similar sizes, but that contain slightly different colors. When an image or a print job is created on a device with a gamut that is different from the printer, you can use a rendering intent to tell the printer how to adjust the colors that are outside the gamut of the printer.

The gamut of a printer is almost always significantly smaller than the gamut of a monitor, digital camera, or scanner. Images or graphics typically must be adjusted to print appropriately because some of the colors that they require might be outside the gamut of the printer.

A rendering intent tells the printer how to adjust the image when it encounters colors that it cannot reproduce. Each rendering intent has different benefits and trade-offs, so you can choose one based on how the print output should look.

For more information, see Rendering intents.