Thursday, April 13, 2006
A Look at ColorThink Pro
Last Monday Steve Upton of CHROMiX spent the day at RIT showing off ColorThink Pro to a small group of color geeks, meeting with faculty and students, and giving a talk on mastering digital media for color in design, photography and its reproduction.
Steve started out the morning by giving a brief history of CHROMiX, the company he founded in 1998 to provide technical services and products to businesses in content-production industries -- creatives and printers. From the needs of his clients, ColorThink was born. His original idea for ColorThink was to create a set of AppleScripts to interact with ColorSync, the color management system integrated into Mac OS.
ColorThink 1.0 was announced at the end of August 2000 and since its initial release it has become the premier color management toolset for making color easy to understand and visualize.
ColorThink Pro introduces some unique features not found in other color management toolsets. I have written-up a short write of some of these features.
Color Worksheet
Color Worksheet is a new module introduced in the ColorThink Pro 3 release. CHROMiX dubs Color Worksheet as a spreadsheet that understands color where the rows are for ICC profile, images, color lists and other color information and the columns are for conversions, image comparisons, and calculations.
Color Worksheet module introduced in ColorThink Pro 3.
The Color Worksheet provides a workflow model to evaluate what occurs at each stage of the color imaging workflow. Shown in the screen capture above is a standard RGB-to-CMYK workflow in which a RGB image is assigned an RGB profile (sRGB in this case) and converted to a device-CMYK (SWOP in this case).
The Profile row shows the profiles used within the workflow and the link button can be used to created ICC DeviceLink, abstract, and ColorCast profiles.
The Images row shows how the image will be rendered at each stage of the workflow. A Delta E map (image on the far right in the above screen capture) shows which regions of the image exceed a user definable Delta E tolerance.
The Colors row, shows a list of colors (For example, from a color data file) or data from a sample image. These can be user selected points, pixel-by-pixel image lists, or unique color image lists. This data can be used to calculate Delta E and can be exported for more advanced data manipulation.
Improved Graphing
ColorThink Pro introduces an improved graphing environment for visualizing ICC profiles and color lists.
Improved Grapher module in ColorThink Pro 3.
The Grapher module uses OpenGL, the premier open source graphics application programming interface to create high quality 2D and 3D graphs. Color management calculations are handled by Little cms, the open source small-footprint, speed optimized color management engine.
The Grapher module introduces two new functions, the Slicer and Channel Constraints. The Slicer function allows the 3D gamut map to sliced at any L* level. The screen capture below shows a 3D plot of the SWOP gamut sliced at 50L.
Improved Grapher module in ColorThink Pro 3 showing Slicer function.
According to Upton, the Channel Constraints function was born out of a bug in ColorThink 2 -- It's not a bug, it's a feature. The function allows the user to remove a percentage of a color channel. The screen capture below shows below shows the Yellow channel removed from a CMYK profile.
Improved Grapher module in ColorThink Pro 3 showing Channel Constraints function.
The Channel Constraints function is useful when a printing system transfers too much ink to the substrate and causes hooking of a color primaty. This typically seen in ink jet proofing systems. The Channel Constraints function provides an intelligent method to determine where cut back curves should be applied. Unfortunately I don't have a data set to show this phenomenon.
ColorCast Technology
ColorCast is a patent-pending technology developed by CHROMiX and can be added to ColorThink Pro as separate module. ColorCast can do a number of things, but its primary application is embedding the proofing effect of one profile inside another profile.
ColorSmarts Guide
The ColorSmarts Guide is a combination automation tool and color teacher. Think of this module as having the ability to have Steve Upton standing over your shoulder walking you through the various analysis and reporting functions of ColorThink Pro.
Wrap-up
ColorThink Pro is a must have application for the color management professional or for anyone trying to understand color better. CHROMiX also offers a scaled down version of ColorThink for users not requiring all the Pro features. Check out the ColorThink Feature Comparison Chart for more details.
Posted in: Color Management | Software
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