Change color settings for all users

1. Open Color Management.
2. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Change system defaults.
3. From the Device list in the Color Management - System Defaults dialog box, select the color device that you want to associate with one or more color profiles for all users on the computer that are using the default color settings for that device.
4. Do one or more of the following:
   • If you want to add a new color profile for the selected device, click Add, and then go to step 5.
   • If you don't want a color profile to be associated with the selected device, click the color profile, click Remove, and then click Yes to disassociate the profile from the device. To continue, go to step 6.
   • If more than one color profile is selected for a device, click the color profile that you want to set as the default for that device, and then click Set as Default Profile. To continue, go to step 6.
5. In the Associate Color Profile dialog box, do one or both of the following:
   • If you want to specify a color profile that’s already installed on the computer, click the color profile in the list, and then click OK.
   • If you want to specify a custom color profile that isn’t already installed on the computer, click Browse, locate the custom color profile, and then click Add.
     The selected color profile (or profiles) is now associated with the device and will be used to describe the color characteristics of that device.
6. (Optional) Do one of the following:
   • To save the association between the selected device and the current set of profiles that it uses, click Profiles, and then click Save associations. In the File name box, type a name for the device association, and then click Save.
   • To load a device association file so that the selected device uses the color settings that are specified in the association file, click the Profiles button, and then click Load associations. Locate and select the saved association file, and then click Open.
7. In the Color Management – System Defaults dialog box, click Close.
8. In the Color Management dialog box, click Close.
   If the default color settings aren’t already being used (in which case, the Use my settings for this device check box is selected), you will be notified when you open Windows Color Management that the system default color settings have been changed. At that time, you can choose to merge those changes with your own settings or reset your color settings to match the new system default color settings for the selected device.

What's the default rendering intent?

A rendering intent determines how colors are represented when changing from one device (and, consequently, color space) to another. You can think of rendering intent as a style of rendering colors; it's the approach that Windows uses to choose the right colors when translating colors from one device to another.

The Advanced tab in Windows Color Management lets you specify a mapping between WCS gamut-mapping model profiles and the four common ICC rendering intents. In general, you should only change these rendering intent mappings if you have installed third-party WCS plug-in gamut-mapping models and you want to use those instead of the default WCS gamut mapping. Most users will never need to change these settings.

Most graphics editing programs let you specify a rendering intent for a picture. If your program doesn't, you can specify the default rendering intent that's used. There are four common rendering intents that cover the most common uses. Depending upon the rendering intent, the appearance of a picture will be different, since Windows will use a different range of available colors to render it. These are the four rendering intents in common use:

Rendering intent	Common use
Perceptual (photo images)	Best for photographic images. When colors are converted from one device's color space to another, the relationship between colors is maintained. This is the initial default rendering intent setting for Windows.
Relative colorimetric (line art)	Best when a few specific colors must be matched exactly, such as when rendering logo graphics. This is also the best choice for the last transformation stage in print previews. The colors that fall within the allowable color space of both devices are left unchanged, but other colors may change, resulting in compressed color tone. The relative colorimetric rendering intent will map white from the source device color space to white in the destination device color space.
Absolute colorimetric (simulate paper)	Best for use in the last transformation stage when making page proofs where you want to represent the paper color in the output. Absolute colorimetric intent differs from relative colorimetric intent in that white in the source color space isn't mapped to white in the destination color space.
Saturation (charts and graphs)	Best for business graphics in which vividness is more important than realistic color, such as with business charts and graphs. When colors are converted from one device's color space to another, the relative hue is maintained, but colors may shift.