Color management part 2--press fingerprinting
October 2003
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Press fingerprinting for color matching lays the groundwork for a collective color vision.
WHEN YOU MAKE most of your living writing about technology, you have the privilege of picking the brains of some very well versed subject-matter experts. Opinions vary of course, but I've found that the most impassioned, most expressive leaders all have one thing in common: Vision.
A motivational speaker once told me that it was vision with a capital "V" that made it possible for U.S.-born Gertrude Ederle to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel in the 1920s. She described how each time Ederle started to falter along the grueling 21-mile crawl through icy waters in gale winds, her coach would show her a photo of her landing site. By keeping a very specific pictorial reference of her goal in front of her, Ederle not only conquered the Channel, she beat the best men's time by two hours.
I never forgot this inspirational anecdote, and I thought it would be an appropriate lead for an article that takes us through somewhat unchartered waters. Vision, both literally and figuratively, factors heavily into our mastery over color in printing. For while technology has given us a methodology and means for getting at the DNA of color (packagePRINTING September 2003, p. 12, "To Measure is to Know"), the ends to which we apply our knowledge is determined solely within human minds and judged ultimately by human eyes.
As suggested in last month's article, a color-managed workflow is one in which every color input and output device employed in the print production chain has been a) calibrated to its optimal performance under a given set of repeatable conditions; and b) has been profiled and is capable of employing industry standard ICC color profiling data.
Color management software is used to direct the color transformations of an image from one device gamut through to that of another, in an attempt to make two outputs match. They're also used to edit and adjust the numbers of a device profile.
The International Color Consortium (ICC) publishes a format specification for color profiles, which describes how color data is to be expressed. Software developers and manufacturers of color input and output devices use these specifications. The ICC also publishes a registry of reference names for color profiles—which could grow to be of major importance as the industry embraces the need for a common color language.
WHEN YOU MAKE most of your living writing about technology, you have the privilege of picking the brains of some very well versed subject-matter experts. Opinions vary of course, but I've found that the most impassioned, most expressive leaders all have one thing in common: Vision.
A motivational speaker once told me that it was vision with a capital "V" that made it possible for U.S.-born Gertrude Ederle to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel in the 1920s. She described how each time Ederle started to falter along the grueling 21-mile crawl through icy waters in gale winds, her coach would show her a photo of her landing site. By keeping a very specific pictorial reference of her goal in front of her, Ederle not only conquered the Channel, she beat the best men's time by two hours.
I never forgot this inspirational anecdote, and I thought it would be an appropriate lead for an article that takes us through somewhat unchartered waters. Vision, both literally and figuratively, factors heavily into our mastery over color in printing. For while technology has given us a methodology and means for getting at the DNA of color (packagePRINTING September 2003, p. 12, "To Measure is to Know"), the ends to which we apply our knowledge is determined solely within human minds and judged ultimately by human eyes.
As suggested in last month's article, a color-managed workflow is one in which every color input and output device employed in the print production chain has been a) calibrated to its optimal performance under a given set of repeatable conditions; and b) has been profiled and is capable of employing industry standard ICC color profiling data.
Color management software is used to direct the color transformations of an image from one device gamut through to that of another, in an attempt to make two outputs match. They're also used to edit and adjust the numbers of a device profile.
The International Color Consortium (ICC) publishes a format specification for color profiles, which describes how color data is to be expressed. Software developers and manufacturers of color input and output devices use these specifications. The ICC also publishes a registry of reference names for color profiles—which could grow to be of major importance as the industry embraces the need for a common color language.
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