ICC profiles reside in Program Files/(x86) > Common Files > Adobe > Color, but also in Windows > System32/SysWOW64 > Spool > Drivers > Color.
I’m not sure about the sequence, but I think Adobes profiles are installed in the Adobe folder and copied over to the system folder. Which set is "active" in use I don’t know.
I tried copying the profiles into the Adobe profile folder, but no go. They don’t show up in theprofile list. Seems to me they should be read from \Windows\System32\spool\color. I’m on Windows Vista 32. The funny thing is I don’t understand why the deleted profiles appear. Where does the print profile menu read the profile options from ?
Now that you mention it, things are getting more complicated. My Vista system now has at least three – count em – profile related folders.
The first two:
c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\color, and
c:\windows\sysWOW63\spool\drivers\color
has profiles that are used by system device drivers, and by profile aware programs such as Photoshop. These are generally device specific profiles, plus the sRGB profile, which serves as a default device profile. On my system, only the first of these – system32 – had profiles, presumably because I don’t yet have any 64 bit native device drivers. Photoshop uses the first of these two folders to save any custom profiles created manually in the Color Settings dialog.
The third folder:
c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Profiles\Color
has profiles that are "special" to Adobe, since they contain the default working color spaces. They appear in the top section of the drop-down profile list in the Color Settings, printer, and profile conversion dialogs.
You can copy your own profiles to this folder. The profiles in this folder can be duplicates of the ones under c:\windows, so that they appear at the top of Photohsop’s list, and are available to system devices.
