In order to distribute creative image content, authors go to great lengths to safeguard that it is used and reproduced in the way they want. In this paper we propose to use the framework of ICC color management in a novel way, in order to provide a means for determining two aspects of image reproduction: 1. on what devices and media it can be printed and 2. who authors want their content to print. We achieve this by creating a custom pair of ICC profiles, one part of which acts as a “public-key” and the other as a “private-key”, while the color management engine acts as the encoder/decoder. The key to this approach is to depart from the pre-requisite of a common Profile Connection Space and instead generate a multitude of encrypted spaces. If the profile used to encode an image uses the same encrypted space as the profile used to decode it, the image is reconstructed without error, if this is not the case the reconstructed image is unusable as the colors are scrambled. The main benefit of this approach is that it requires no changes to the typical workflow of converting between color spaces using existing software, while affording control over content in a safe and easy way.
Peter Moroviè, Ján Moroviè, Michel Encrenaz, Jordi Vilar, Jordi Arnabat, "Color Scrambling for Secure Digital Content Distribution" in Proc. IS&T 18th Color and Imaging Conf., 2010, pp 314 - 317, https://doi.org/10.2352/CIC.2010.18.1.art00055