An overall color transformation is constructed from multiple ones of individual color transformation steps, the overall color transformation used by a color management system to transform colors from one color space to another. A sequence of sequential add operations is executed, each add operation adding a single one of the individual transformation steps to an intermediate transformation constructed from preceding add operations, and for each add operation returning at least one value which characterizes the add operation. The sequence of subsequent add operations is altered based on preceding ones the returned values.