It’s getting easier to use your computer screen to make decisions about color images. True soft-proofing remains a distant goal, but remote decision-making has more support—especially if you aren’t trying to judge the color.

Monitor calibration has been an active area of innovation this spring. In the professional market, GretagMacbeth made news with its Eye-One spectro, which can get accurate readings from LCD displays—something no competitor has yet mastered. And in the consumer market, Waytech is hoping to bypass the user’s purchase decision entirely; it wants monitor makers to sell screens with built-in color management.

Meanwhile, other vendors are exploring how much you can do without color-managing the screen. Last year, we noted ProofitOnline’s approach, which hasn’t changed much (see Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, Vol. 29, No. 5). Now, Durst-Dice and Integrated Software, aiming at entirely different applications, have also debuted remote proofing.

Waytech: monitor calibration at the factory

Waytech Development (http://www.coloreal.com/) has entered the race to provide color-accurate Web browsers to consumers. Taking a different tack from the other contestants, Waytech works, not with users, but with computer system makers to embed color management into the hardware and the operating system. Thus the consumer does not have to calibrate the monitor or, indeed, take any other action. This, Waytech says, is the only way that consumers will ever adopt a color-management technology. So far, we were told, 38 manufacturers have signed up.

Waytech’s approach is simple. Because the system manufacturer sells the whole system, including preinstalled software, it knows the characteristics of the monitor and video card, along with any quirks of the Web browser. All of these can thus be managed by custom patches to the Windows operating system, which Waytech helps the manufacturer develop. Companies that participate in Waytech’s program display a “Coloreal” sticker on their products.

One question is whether users will inadvertently defeat the system. Waytech thinks they won’t. Consumers rarely change their hardware and typically get their OS upgrades from their original system vendor. Monitor makers increasingly are removing the color controls from the front panel, leaving only brightness and contrast. Teenagers, geeks and power users who tinker with the computer’s innards can quickly derail Waytech’s approach, but they aren’t the target market.

Our take. In the B-to-C world, it’s a valid hope that some color management, no matter how imperfect, will be better than none. The hard part has always been persuading the consumers to use a calibration utility or other tool. Thus Waytech may have found the only method that works: Figure out the proper settings, build them into the system and don’t give the customers any way to screw them up. Admittedly, this method doesn’t compensate for phosphor aging or room lighting. But it probably delivers about 70 percent of the color accuracy that a “real” color management system could offer, and the consumer doesn’t have to lift a finger.



Eye-One. GretagMacbeth’s new spectro can work with LCD panels as well as CRTs. A special shoe, which hangs from a strap and counterweight, spreads the weight over a large area of the screen.


Eye-One calibrates LCDs; software is free

GretagMacbeth has developed a spectrophotometer that works on flat-panel displays as well as standard CRTs. Called Eye-One, the spectro boasts 5nm resolution. This is important, we were told, because LCDs emit light in much narrower spectral bands than CRTs. Internally, it uses a simple plastic diffraction grating, and thus can be manufactured at relatively low cost.

Two versions are offered. Eye-One Monitor is limited to measuring active light sources; it costs $600. Eye-One Pro, costing $1,500, contains an internal illumination source and can thus measure either active sources or reflected light from printed samples. (For this reason, the base Eye-One cannot be upgraded to a Pro model.) Both models have a USB interface, drawing power from a Mac or PC host. The Pro instrument can support GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One Match printer-profiling software, a $1,500 option.

Measuring a LCD screen is harder than you might think. Putting pressure on the screen causes color shifts. GretagMacbeth minimizes the distortion in two ways. First, the instrument has a special mounting shoe that distributes its weight over a large area. Second, the screen is set to a near-vertical position during the measurement; the mounting shoe hangs from a strap and counterweight, so the horizontal component of force against the screen is almost zero.

Shareware. GretagMacbeth also introduced the Eye-One Share software, which creates color palettes. The palettes are defined in terms of spectral data and thus can be manipulated to simulate the effect of different lighting conditions and output devices. The palettes can be shared among users of the software and can also be exported to many graphics packages.

Eye-One Share is free. It is bundled with Eye-One spectros, and users are encouraged to give the software to their clients and colleagues. It can also be downloaded from http://www.i1color.com/. GretagMacbeth figures that if Share becomes widespread, so will an understanding of spectral color. That, in turn, should stimulate demand for spectros.

Wacom bundle. Wacom’s PL500 is a nice combination of a cordless, pressure-sensitive pen and a 15-inch LCD screen, which together make an interactive graphics tablet. At $4,000, it’s a bit expensive, but it comes closer to the experience of drawing on paper than standard tablets.

Aimed at designers, photographers and medical-imaging applications, the PL500 is a natural match for GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One calibrator. The two firms have announced an alliance to cross-promote the products.

Monaco at version 2, supports expansion tables

Monaco Systems has made several improvements in version 2 of its EZcolor profile-making program. The user interface has been honed and the help function made more accessible. And the program has been extended to allow users to edit profiles, albeit with only simple controls. The program allows tweaks to overall lightness, saturation and contrast, along with color balance adjustments for highlights, midtones and shadows.

Under the hood, EZcolor 2 supports expansion tables in profiles. These tables, whose format was recently standardized by ICC, supplement the basic color transformation formulas and thus improve the rendering of color on LCD displays which, unlike CRTs, are not well modeled by a simple gamma curve. Expansion tables also make it possible to use a scanner to generate accurate profiles for ultra-bright papers, dye-sub and laser printers, and printers with pigmented inks.

EZcolor costs $300; the package includes a precision IT8 target for scanner profiling. For $500, the software is bundled with a monitor colorimeter called MonacoSensor.

Durst-Dice is ASP for content proofing

Durst-Dice America has a new offering that is targeted primarily at photo labs and secondarily at graphic-arts production houses. It’s a remote proofing system, called Lynx, that combines a Web server, storage system and RIP. It has no color-management or annotation features, so it doesn’t really compete with RealTimeImage or ProofitOnline. Rather, it’s designed for “content proofing”—verifying that the text and layout are correct, the right pictures are in the right places and so on.

The Opposite of Color
Trumatch founders Steven Abramson and Jane Nichols have another business—one whose product is absolutely colorless. Residents of Long Island, NY, they have created a brand of vodka, Peconika, that is distilled only “from potatoes and grain grown in the Hamptons” at the east end of the island. The liquor is named for the nearby Great Peconic Bay.

It’s aimed at upscale Islanders; the packaging
is elegant and, we presume, carefully color-managed. Distribution has lately expanded to New York City and nearby New Jersey suburbs, and there may be latent demand in Florida. Information (but not e-commerce) is available at http://www.peconika.com/.

Alas, Peconika is not produced locally; it’s impossible to obtain permits to operate a distillery on Long Island. The potatoes are packed into refrigerated trucks and hauled to a contract distiller located, ironically, in Idaho.

In operation, the job to be proofed is fed to the RIP, which is based on DDA’s Cheetah interpreter. The output is a 72-dpi view file, which is saved into one of the Web server’s document directories. (The directories typically have passwords to protect client privacy.) The metadata—job number, version, keywords, etc.—are sent to a database that clients can search. Finally, an
e-mail notification is sent to the client.

DDA does not plan to offer a collaborative revision service; the client replies to the e-mail notice with a simple go or no-go message. The viewfile is not intended to serve as a contract proof; DDA believes there will always be a role for hard copy. Lynx is designed merely to catch gross errors as early in the production process as possible.

Lynx can be purchased for $120,000, which includes Windows 2000 software (RIP, Web server, SQL Server database) and a DVD-ROM jukebox for mass storage. Alternatively, DDA can act as a Lynx ASP, charging $5,900 per year for the first 5,000 files and 30 cents per file above that.

Integrated adds online review

Integrated Software, developer of the Retail Netvantage suite of sales planning tools, has added an online image review and approval function called ISProof. It allows brand managers, buyers, photographers and manufacturers to verify that the images chosen for an advertising campaign or a catalog are indeed the right ones. It lets users list the products for a campaign, inspect the properties (manufacturer’s part number, color options, quantity on hand, etc.) of each item. The photo is displayed as a thumbnail that can be clicked to bring up a full-size version.

There is no attempt at color management in ISProof. The system is designed to be used by marketing execs relatively early in a campaign; color proofing is still required when the campaign reaches the stage of print production. There is, however, detailed tracking of the approvals and comments received, set against the timeline for the campaign. In addition, the system presumes that execs might tacitly waive their right to review. Each step of the approval process can have an expiration time, and an expired step is counted as an OK.

The system was initially designed for the Toys ‘R’ Us chain. It runs on Oracle 8. As with other Integrated Software products, it is aimed primarily at large, multi-site enterprises where integration with other databases is crucial. Pricing is primarily determined by the scale of the installation and the amount of customization required.

Studion ships ColorBlade

After a long period of testing (complicated by API changes in Photoshop and the Mac OS during the test period), Studion has released its ColorBlade plug-in. Since the product was first announced (see Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, Vol. 30, No. 2), there have been several key simplifications in the user interface. Some are cosmetic, such as independent zoom settings for each pane of the image window.

Others are functional. For example, the prerelease version allowed the user to select different monitor profiles. When the plug-in is running within Photoshop 4, which lacks color management, this is a useful feature. But in Photoshop 5 or 6, which have extensive color-management controls, the testers found that it can be counterproductive. The solution: ColorBlade determines which version it is running under, and enables or hides the monitor-profile selector accordingly.

In addition, there have been changes to the underlying algorithms. The plug-in now works entirely in 16-bit-per-channel mode, even if Photoshop supplies 8-bit data, in order to minimize the loss of dynamic range from the color transforms ColorBlade performs.

ColorBlade is downloadable from Studion’s Web site (http://www.studion.com/); the list price is $200, but the introductory price is $140. Studion is also setting up distributor deals. We were told that a CD-ROM version is being prepared, which will be the primary distribution medium in overseas markets.

Futures. With version 1 out the door, Studion is thinking of ways to expand its technology. VARs might create niche-market packages by distributing ColorBlade with preset appearance profiles, for example. In addition, Studion is thinking about putting its technology into an Acrobat plug-in.

Prolatus debuts a product line,
spins off ASP business

As the founders of Colorcentric.com called on prospects last fall, they found that the printers in their target market were fascinated by the Colorcentric technology, which supports color correction and retouching over the wire. But the printers were not interested in working with an ASP; rather, they wanted to be the ASP for their clients. Bowing to this market reality, the founders decided to adjust their business model: Instead of services, they would sell servers.

Renaming the company Prolatus, they packaged the technology in five components, which collectively are called Catalyst Technology.

Prolatus Courier is software that runs on each user’s desktop. When the user drops an image onto the Courier icon, the program creates a job ticket and generates a highly compressed version of the image. It saves these in a “CXM” file. This file can be placed in a server hot folder or sent over networks via e-mail, FTP, etc. The Courier application is free; it runs on Mac or Windows.

Prolatus Expert is the program that the color guru uses to correct and retouch the image. It decompresses the CXM file, then tracks the changes the guru makes to the image. The changes are saved in the form of a script, called a CXP file, that is returned to the original user. There, Courier replays the script and applies the changes to the original, full-resolution image. Thus, any artifacts introduced by the compression process do not become part of the final result. The Expert application costs $5,000; it runs on Mac or Windows.

Prolatus Courier Server automates the process of creating CXM files and transmitting them to the expert who will do the correction. It is designed for high-volume operations, and costs $10,000. It runs on Windows 95 or higher.

Prolatus Expert Server is the companion to a Courier Server. In addition to handling file transmission and decompression, it automates sending an e-mail notification when the correction has been performed. It costs $20,000 and runs on Windows 95 or higher.

Prolatus WebConnect is a ready-to-run e-commerce server that lets a printer set up a complete, branded Web site with security, user registration, account management, invoicing, e-mail notices and job archiving. In effect, it sets the printer up as an ASP. It costs $45,000 and runs on NT or Windows 2000.

Efficiency. Obviously, remote color correction could be done without using any Catalyst Technology tools. If bandwidth were plentiful, you could simply send the original image file over the Internet. Unfortunately, bandwidth is a severe constraint for most of us. Prolatus notes that, in one test, an 18-MB raw image was sent out as a 900-KB CXM file and was returned as a 200-KB CXP script. While JPEG or wavelet compressors could attain similar compression ratios, they typically introduce color shifts and other artifacts. Prolatus, in contrast, says that its approach eliminates artifacts.

Futures. Prolatus says it is exploring several possible extensions of its technology. One area is remote proofing, markup and approval. Another is remote page design and production.

Prolatus will continue to support its Colorcentric service customers, but it has stopped accepting new accounts. Eventually, it hopes to spin that business off as a separate entity.

Quick mentions

Rounding out our news for this issue are a few short items. First, X-Rite now offers a Macintosh SDK for its Spectrofiler, in addition to the earlier Windows kit. This will be interesting mainly to all-Mac shops; now they won’t have to support a lone PC just to run the spectro.

Pantone reports continuing progress in signing up retailers to participate in its “The Right Color” program for e-commerce. (In this approach, retailers identify product colors by Pantone number so that, regardless of how the image is rendered by the monitor, a consumer can refer to a Pantone swatchbook in making color decisions.) It has lately added Studio Direct and Tapestria to the list of participating merchants. Perhaps more important, the National Retail Federation has adopted Pantone’s Textile Color System as its standard for entering color information into retailers’ databases.

Trumatch, a competitor to Pantone in the color-fanbook business, recently released a utility program for Mac or Windows that lets users print up custom swatch sheets on desktop printers; it is available from http://www.trumatch.com/. The Mac price is $183, while the Windows price is $133; but various discounts are available.

[时间：2002-04-25  作者：seyboldreport  来源：By Peter Dyson]