With more and more people using Windows XP to work with digital photos and images, it’s important to have results that contain accurate colors. One way that you can improve the quality of pictures and graphics is to use the Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP.

Many people are not familiar with the Color Control Panel Applet because it is not included with Windows XP. It is a free add-on from Microsoft that can be used to take advantage of color technology built into Windows XP known as Image Color Management (ICM) 2.0. Once the applet is installed, you can use it to perform the following tasks:

• Install and uninstall color profiles
• Inspect, rename, and compare two different color profiles
• View a 3D graphics plot of color profile gamuts
• Associate color profiles with devices such as printers, monitors, and scanners
• Apply custom color gamut adjustments to one or more displays “on the fly”
• Set up display calibration reminders at intervals you specify

In this series of articles, I will outline the steps you need to complete in order to install the Color Control Panel Applet as well as how to configure the various color settings. This article assumes you are running Windows XP on your computer.

[tags]XP, Color Control Panel Applet, Diana Huggins, color profile[/tags]