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 nearly always have to 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.