In ICC v4 colour management, data is exchanged between different colour encodings via a fixed Profile Connection Space (PCS), in which colorimetry is based on the D50 illuminant, and the CIE 1931 standard observer. According to the ICC specification, colorimetry that is based on a different illuminant, or observer should be transformed into the fixed PCS; however, while a chromatic adaptation method is specified for when illuminants are different, there is no method specified for differences in observer. The Waypoint method has been proposed as a means of transforming between different colorimetric data encodings. In this study a Waypoint-based method recommended by ICC was evaluated as a mechanism for transforming into the ICC PCS, as applied to a use case in digital textile printing in which source colorimetry is based on the D65 illuminant and the CIE 1964 observer. It was compared with an alternative approach in which a non-ICC PCS was used within a conventional ICC colour management framework. The results show that when both source and destination colorimetry are based on D65/10-degrees, both methods perform equally well. However, when the source and destination colorimetry do not match, the ICC approach of transforming via the standard PCS yields better results.
Peter Nussbaum, Milan Kresović, Phil Green, "Non-standard colorimetry in ICC colour management" in Proc. IS&T Int’l. Symp. on Electronic Imaging: Color Imaging: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications, 2022, pp 140-1 - 140-4, https://doi.org/10.2352/EI.2022.34.15.COLOR-140