# Profiling devices

For color management to work, you must profile your devices or use an ICC profile created by the device’s manufacturer.

Capture devices
  Profiling is not critical for capture devices such as digital cameras or scanners. You may want to profile a scanner, however, if you want to accurately reproduce the colors in scanned transparencies, and reduce your color correction workload in Photoshop Elements.
Monitors
  Calibrating and profiling your monitor is important. If you are using a laptop or other LCD monitor, you can use the profile provided by the manufacturer. If you own a colorimeter and corresponding software to create profiles, you can use those profiles in Photoshop Elements.
Printers
  Profiling your inkjet printer will generally give you better results, though you can make excellent prints without a printer profile by using the controls in your printer driver. Many printer manufacturers provide ICC printer profiles on their websites. You need a separate profile for each printer, ink, and type of paper. You can also have profiles made for your favorite combination of ink and paper.

  When you work on a photo and save it, Photoshop Elements can embed (tag) an ICC profile that reflects the colors on your computer monitor or the device that produced it. Embedding profiles with an image makes its color portable, so that different devices can translate its color values. For example, if you send the photo to your inkjet printer, the color management system reads the embedded profile and translates the color data using the printer’s profile. Your printer can then use the translated color data to accurately translate its color into the selected media.

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