Colour Management Systems - A Review Chpt 4.3

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4.3 Kodak

The Kodak Precision Color Management System often forms a Colour Management System for DeskTop Publication packages, particularly those available on Mac and PC. Again the basic theory is the same as in section 2. Colour must be defined in a consistent manner throughout the desk top. There are two components to the colour management problem, characterisation and calibration. Kodak provides solutions for both.

Characterisation sets the relationship of the calibrated state of a device to a device independent reference colour space. Kodak's Precision Color Management System uses Precision Transforms, also known as Colour Profiles, to translate from a device, or an application, colour, to the common reference space. A series of Precision Transforms must be loaded or created for source and destination devices and then combined to efficiently correct colour. Third party applications that include the Kodak Colour Processor pass the component Precision Transforms to the Processor where they are combined into one. This transform directly links colour from the input device to output device.

Precision Transforms can be either generic or custom generated. Generic Precision Transforms are available through Kodak or other third party vendors for popular devices on the market. They are constructed for average device settings and characteristics using scientific assumptions about the way a particular device interprets colour.

Where optimal colour quality is critical, Kodak offers many software packages that generate custom Precision Transforms. These include Kodak Precision Input Color Characterisation software. This determines how scanners see colour and allows the creation of a custom profile for any scanner.

4.4 Agfa

Agfa FotoTune is a CMS which works as in the generic description given in section 2. It is designed to be used in conjunction with other packages and on both PC and Mac platforms. It is, for example, compatible with ColorSync, Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXPress. More packages are supported on Mac than PC.

The FotoTune package consists of a set of ColorTags (device profiles) for a range of output devices, a method of creating ColorTags for scanners, and a method of creating colour links between the two. Its ColorTags are compatible with ColorSync. The available range of ColorTags is very large and there is the implication in their literature that they can provide advice for other devices on request. There is also provision for out-of-gamut warnings if monitor colours are not reproducible on the selected output device.

4.5 Microsoft

In the same way that Apple have incorporated a CMS as an operating system extension, so is Microsoft. This will be released in Windows 95 (Chicago) as an OS architectural framework known as the Image Color Matching Framework (ICM). Alongside this will sit components licensed from Kodak. Chicago will support the ICC standard colour profiles. Consequently it can be expected that many of the features described under section 4.3 will also become available as standard on the PC platform.

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