Curve4: Now with Maxwell!

Guess what new feature is being added to Curve4?

Long-term color tracking and trending for your entire print organization!

Guess how much that will cost?  

No additional charge for any Curve4 customer!

Bonus question:  How hard will it be to implement?

Two easy setup items in Maxwell and two easy setup items in the new Curve4.

Steve Upton explains the details in this new video.

I Love a Color Management Mystery!

Gumshoe, private detective, crime solving...

Deductive reasoning, sleuthing, observing…

A perplexing case, a curved pipe, a deerstalker cap...

I'm putting together my session for #COLOR20 in San Diego. This year John Thornton and I are putting more fun into the topic of color management.  This conference gets better every year.  Hope to see you there!

https://color.printing.org/speaker/patrick-herold/

JVH Digital Festival coming in October

If you are in the State of Washington in early October, make plans on coming to the:

JVH Digital Festival

October 3, 2019
Bellevue Washington

The Harrington family are a top-notch dealer for large format inkjet printers in the local Seattle market.  They are generously hosting this free educational event for their customers and anyone who is interested in learning more about printing, photography and color management.  Pat Herold of CHROMiX will be one of the speakers, teaching a beginner's session on color management. 

The JVH festivals are always fun, worthwhile events - packed with practical information for the small photography or printing business.   If you are in Washington, you don't want to miss this!

You can even enter your printed artwork or photography in the print contest.

The event is free, but please contact them to register ahead of time. 

http://www.jvhtech.com/festival.php

i1Pro 3 Plus instrument from X-Rite

For years this blog has been proudly telling our profiling secrets to all who would listen.  One of the policies that makes for a better profile, for certain papers and fabrics, is the use of polarized measurements.  Our president, Steve Upton, has been hammering on the instrument makers for years to please include polarizing capability into their new instruments.   One company that had seemed deaf to our pleas has been X-Rite.

Turns out, maybe they were listening after all!  X-Rite recently announced a new i1Pro:  The i1Pro 3 Plus.  This model is made specifically to take measurements of textiles and other unusual materials.   Important features include:

- Polarization filter that enables the instrument to take M3 measurements

- A larger, 8mm aperture to get better sampling of fabric patterns

- The instrument can support transmission scanning for backlit film.

- The IO table has been updated to support this new i1Pro 3 Plus, and now enables measuring backlit materials.

The new i1Pro 3 Plus and the new IO table are slated to be available in July, 2019.

X-Rite press release on i1Pro 3 Plus

Happy Birthday, CHROMiX!

CHROMiX celebrated 20 years as a company by hosting a taste of birthday cake for everyone at the color management conference in San Diego earlier this month.  For those who have never been to this conference, consider going next year - as it's a smaller, more intimate setting where you can learn more about how to improve the color in the print room, the camera, or the display on your desktop.   

Twenty years is actually a long time for a company to be around in the digital color world.  Back when the company started, the Indigo printer was still owned by Benny Landa (before HP), the Apple Studio Display was one of the first LCD displays (a whopping 15") for $1999, and Nikon made a 2.7 megapixel camera that sold for almost $6000!  We have seen a lot of development of the industry over the years and are happy to have had a hand it in.

Profiling Secrets revealed!

Steve Upton, Pat Herold and Rick Hatmaker are gearing up to head to the PIA Color Conference 2019 in San Diego coming up in January 12th to 15th.  Pat will be presenting a session on how to make great profiles. Steve has a couple of sessions on verification & troubleshooting inkjet output, as well as analysis of expanded gamut printing.

CHROMiX will also be providing a 20th Year Birthday Cake during the 3:20 pm afternoon break on Monday the 14th. Come join us if you can!

Last year was a surprisingly great conference in the new location with a lot of new people.   This year promises to be even better!

Color 2019 is back with more than 35 in-depth sessions, featuring four tracks, including Brand & Design, Print Production How-to's, Wide Format Inkjet, and Standards & Research. Whether you're a creative, brand professional, production specialist, or a color management expert, there will be sessions that are well-matched for you at this year's conference. Color 2019 is where you'll find the best, most practical and in-depth information from the best minds in color—and gain knowledge that will strengthen your competitive edge.

Visit www.printing.org/color for more information!

Award-Winning Curve4

 We have just learned that Curve4 has won a software design award!  The Xojo design awards for 2018 have just been announced at the Xojo Developer's Conference in Denver.  The report is that judging the winners was not easy because of a large number of great entries.

Curve4 received the award for Best Specialty App for 2018!

All of you who marvel at the complex calculations and the powerful new features in Curve4, even while the user interface is easy and intuitive - well... you're not the only ones to be impressed.

Better transmissive profiles

A few years ago I posted here about the popularity of our transmissive profiles.
http://blog.chromix.com/2010/07/transmissive-profiles.html
Now, these profiles are faster, better and less expensive.  Since that post in 2010 we have invested in a state-of-the-art Barbieri LFP spectrophotometer, which makes it possible to take transmissive measurements using our standard target. 

The word "transmissive" means we are capturing the measurements of the color as it passes through the clear or semi-opaque material.  The effect of a light source transmitting through the semi-clear media and through the ink can best be captured using a spectrophotometer that is specially made for this purpose.  You might use transmissive profiles if you are producing images intended to be back-lit in light boxes or other such displays.

Before, we would have to charge $150 per profile for RGB Transmissive profiles because of the great deal of handling involved in making these measurements using the DTP-41T.  Now, we use the same target we use for the ColorValet Pro service.  This means that ColorValet Pro customers can now get transmissive profiles for only $49 more per profile.  And for our regular ColorValet customers, we have been able to lower our price for standalone RGB transmissive profiles to $99.00.    (CMYK transmissive profiles are still $150.)

https://www.chromix.com/colorgear/shop/productdetail.cxsa?toolid=50191

Curve4 full release

CHROMiX & HutchColor announce Curve4 full release, completing expansion of essential G7 tool.

Curve4 full release brings G7 Master verification, industry-standard G7 Calibration, plus the powerful new Blend toolset together in one place.

Integrated Measurement - responding to the number one user request, Curve4 now drives the best instruments including X-Rite's i1Pro, iO, iSis, Barbieri's Spectro LFP, Konica Minolta's new FD-9 and Techkon's SpectroDens (Mac-only initially). X-Rite eXact support will follow soon.

Verify Tool (released Sep. 2016) has a unique visual interface aimed at print buyers and print professionals alike. It quickly summarizes a printing system's compliance to the newest G7 Master Pass/Fail Requirements, including Grayscale, Targeted and ColorSpace and SCCA. It also provides Pass/Fail testing of production proofs using standard ISO 12647-7 control strips and exports measured data for G7 Master submission. All current ISO 15339 CRPCs are included along with Idealliance's new XCMYK characterization data, and Curve4 also loads custom color aims.

"Verify Tool is a great leave-behind when G7 implementers are gone." explained Steve Upton, President of CHROMiX, "It's easy for customers to perform quick verifications with references set up beforehand by their G7 Expert."

Calibrate Tool (released today) is the upgrade of the industry's de facto G7 calibration tool, Curve3. New Ink Restriction and predictive color analysis provide pre-calibration that's superior to most RIPs' onboard functions - especially for dye sub and other challenging large format inkjet work.

"The new Ink Restrictions mode is a huge asset.", says Scott Martin of Onsight, an active beta tester, "Not only can it be used to determine the optimal ink restrictions for maximum saturation, but it can also be used to determine a neutral 100% CMY patch"

Experienced G7 implementers will love Curve4's streamlined features including "miniP2P" targets, which are much smaller for fast scanning and fit on smaller printing systems. P2Pless calibration operates with non-P2P targets like the IT8.7/4, and tiny ΔreCal targets can fine-tune an existing calibration with only a handful of patches that easily fit on a live job.

"Two of the biggest requests from Curve3 users was faster operation and the ability to recalibrate a press without printing a whole P2P target" said HutchColor's Don Hutcheson, creator of G7 and co-author of the G7 Master specification. "Curve4 fulfills that promise."

In addition to G7 calibration, Curve4 calibrates Spot Color printing by the new SCTV method from ISO 20654 and by the TVI method to ISO-standard or custom TVI curves - including ISO 2013 curves.

"For packaging, the ability to calibrate to the new SCTV standard, combined with its other innovations, puts Curve4 ahead of the industry!  SCTV is going to simplify and improve the way we print spot color inks, whether for a brand color or 7-color extended gamut printing." said Steve Smiley of SmileyColor & Associates - recently inducted into the FTA Flexo Hall of Fame. "With built-in measuring, fast G7 Master verification, support for CxF and SCTV and all the other new features, I am just overjoyed with Curve4."

Both the Verify and Calibrate tools have greatly-improved full page reports for printing or PDF export.

Blend Tool (released today) is a new multi-function toolset for modifying and enhancing measured data. It's a great place for measuring multiple press targets and then averaging and smoothing them together, tuning their white and black points and exporting to a variety of file formats. Black point adaptation improves measurements for profiles of uncoated or matte stock, correcting proof-to-press mismatches that have existed for years. Targets can also be merged to create different patch sets or have smaller subsets extracted. It even recreates missing patches, for example creating a P2P target from an IT8.

All tools import CMYK ICC profiles as source data and will directly download multiple production measurements from Maxwell, CHROMiX's online color monitoring service. Blended measurements can be exported or uploaded directly to Maxwell for use as custom color aims.

Curve4 manages all files with an easy work list to the left of each tool. Moving between files is fast and they can be organized into client or project folders. CxF and CGATS format measurement files are supported for importing or exporting color data.

Curve4 is available in three license levels: Verify, Calibrate and Complete.

Curve4 Verify is priced at $399, Calibrate is $1,599 and Complete is $2,999 with upgrades available to each level. A Demo mode is available in the free download.

Calibrate Tool with Ink Restriction and miniP2P is enabled by the Calibrate license. VPR, P2Pless, and ΔreCal require the Complete license. Blend tool requires the Complete-level license

Webinar:
Don Hutcheson of HutchColor and Steve Upton of CHROMiX will provide a full overview and demonstrate the new functionalities of Curve4 on May 31st, 2017 at 1:00 pm Pacific US. Attendees can register for the webinar simply by emailing <C4webinar(at)chromix.com>

Availability:
All Curve4 tools are available immediately. Upgrades are available for previous Curve owners.
Please go to http://www.chromix.com/curve4 for more information.

ColorForums

We have our ColorForums.com server off-line for the time being. All the content is still there, but we have put it on temporary hiatus due to continual attacks and spamming.

We are in the process of evaluating alternate platforms for the forums and hope to have something soon.

RIT's School of Media Sciences receives donation of cutting-edge print software solutions from CHROMiX and HutchColor

Monday, February 09, 2015

CHROMiX and HutchColor donate color management and press software products

Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Media Sciences (SMS) has received donations of state-of-the-art software products from two companies considered leading providers of color measurement solutions for the printing industry.

CHROMiX Inc. and HutchColor LLC have donated licenses of two software packages to SMS, widely recognized as a leader in media arts and technology in higher education.

• CHROMiX Inc. has donated ColorThink Pro 3 software for the Macintosh, which will provide SMS students the ability to take advantage of the latest in color management innovation, including International Color Consortium (ICC) profile inspection and the use of look-up tables for color data conversion.
• HutchColor and CHROMiX have donated licenses of Curve3 software, which will enable students to gain insights into the G7 press calibration methodology. G7 produces shared neutral appearance across all printing processes, independent of ICC profiles.

“These generous donations from CHROMiX and HutchColor further enhance our school’s curriculum by giving students the ability to learn new technologies that standardize color-managed print production workflows through hands-on immersive learning,” said Robert Chung, the Roger G. Fawcett Distinguished Professor in SMS. “These solutions will provide RIT students even more ways to demonstrate their technical and problem-solving skills to prospective employers upon graduation.”

“CHROMiX and HutchColor are highly respected leaders in the area of color management technologies,” added Twyla Cummings, acting administrative chair of SMS and senior associate dean of RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. “Partnerships like these further allow SMS to pursue research interests that meet the current and future needs of our evolving industry.”

Steve Upton, president of CHROMiX, said his company is looking forward to the collaboration with RIT and the university’s students.

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with RIT’s School of Media Sciences to educate the next generation of print media professionals with the latest color innovation from CHROMiX,” Upton said.

Don Hutcheson, HutchColor’s president, has a long relationship with RIT dating back to 1983.

“I am delighted to know this donation of Curve3 software will help RIT familiarize future industry professionals with the latest calibration methods and reference print conditions,” he said.

Also posted at these sites:

RIT website

WhatTheyThink website

100 million measurements!

This past November, Maxwell reached a milestone of having received 100 million measurements!

To celebrate this, CHROMiX provided fancy cake for attendees at the 2013 PIA Color Management Conference (in Phoenix, AZ on December 8th). This is the same trade show where we originally announced Maxwell seven years ago.   It was a perfect place and time to mark this great milestone.  It was also some excellent cake.  Lots of people came by, had some cake and took a look at Maxwell.    

As of today, Maxwell is at 114 million measurements and climbing!

Upgrading to Mavericks?

With the announcement by Apple of their new operating system Mavericks (OS 10.9) - and especially because it's free - and available for upgrade from many older OS's.... it's time to issue our customary warning about upgrading.

We always recommend that people hold off for at least a few days or weeks before upgrading to any new OS release. That just gives some time for the app developers to see what's happening in the final OS release and then come out with an update of their app.

It is tempting to think that since app developers would have access to beta versions of the OS, they should be able to update their software as soon as the OS update comes out. In practice we find that this does not happen in this color management industry. I know of some companies who make a policy of never updating their software until the final release of any new OS update - specifically because they have been burned in the past by (unannounced) last minute changes by Apple.

Concerning CHROMiX software products on Mavericks, we have found no problems.

But for other software, be cautious before you leap, listen to the scuttlebutt around the forums, find out how others are making out on the new OS, see if your favorite apps have updates to handle the new OS, and then make the jump when the water's safe.

Update: X-Rite has found that their XRD software requires an update for compatibility with Mavericks.

You can find out more from this page.

Curve3 is here!

Curve3 is out! Curve3 is the latest version of the calibration software that simplifies the IDEAlliance G7 calibration method for linearizing printing presses and other printers. While we talked about Curve3 in our December newsletter, we came up with so many more features to add that it took longer to finally get it all ready. We think it will prove to be worth the wait!

This new version has advanced smoothing algorithms when inputting data, the ability to linearize special inks besides CMYK, the ability to use the printer's native black as the aim point (useful for some inkjets), the ability to begin with custom values in the initial calibration (making for improved results), improvements to VPR (the Virtual Press Run) module, and a lot of additional analysis and diagnosis functions.  Click here for more details on our website.   Click here for a newsletter article describing the new features.

80,000,000

For some reason, Maxwell does not get mentioned much in our blog. Perhaps it's because Maxwell is the behind-the-scenes color repository that powers many of the other service we provide such as ColorValet, Digital PressWatch, ProofWatch, DisplayWatch. Well, despite a lack of renown, Maxwell has quietly been accumulating more and more measurements as time passes. And the increase in measurements go up as more Maxwell users come on board. As of this month, Maxwell topped eighty million measurements -
80,000,000.

i1 sale ends soon

CHROMiX is having a sale on ALL i1 products from X-Rite, for a very (very) limited time. Any product that has an "i1" on it will cost you 10% less up until midnight of Wednesday, November 21st.

https://www2.chromix.com/ColorGear

Purchase any 'i1' product before Thanksgiving and we'll take an additional 10% off the CHROMiX price for all i1 items on your order. All i1 product is included in this sale.

Announcing Curve3

Seattle, WA - Oct 2, 2012 - CHROMiX and HutchColor announce the newly updated Curve3™ G7® calibration software at Graph Expo 2012 in Chicago.

Curve 3 is the successor to the industry-leading Curve2™ G7 calibration tool.  Curve2 evolved from the original IDEALink Curve calibration tool that helped launch G7 and establish it as an industry-changing technology.

Curve3 builds upon Curve2's core capabilities with a strong list of additional features requested by the industry:

-         Innovative multi-dimensional data smoothing

-         Special (CMYK+) ink calibration for packaging

-         Spectral VPR (applies curves to full-spectral data)

-         New black-point options for ink-jet and digital

-         Enhanced TVI calibration for European users

-         Intelligent error-reporting and resolution

-         User-specified starting calibration

-         User-defined control point lists

-         Expanded graphs & reports

        … and more

In addition, Curve3 supports OneRun targets and Esko's PressSync® calibration scheme. OneRun targets combine the P2P and profiling targets into one, saving press sheet room and aiding G7 calibration of smaller presses. An upgraded Curve3 Virtual Press Run (VPR) module will be released at the same time. VPR simulates press runs, generating curved color measurements for ICC profiling and saving thousands of dollars. Pricing of Curve3 and VPR will be similar to previous Curve2 pricing. Upgrades for past customers will be available at 50% of MSRP.

Curve3 will be shown at GraphExpo Chicago, McCormick Place South in the Konica Minolta booth #421. CHROMiX and HutchColor will demo Curve2, Curve3 and also CurveCore, an SDK for developers or manufacturers who want to embed G7 calibration into their products. Konica Minolta designates CHROMiX and HutchColor as 'Technology Partners'. Konica Minolta's new Color Care v2.2 software utilizes the CurveCore SDK to offer G7 calibration to Konica Minolta customers.

Konica Minolta Sensing Announces CHROMiX As A Reseller For Graphic Arts Product Line

RAMSEY, NJ, June 5, 2012
Konica Minolta Sensing Americas, Inc. (KMSA), the worldwide leader in the industrial measurement of color, light and 3D shape, announces the addition of CHROMiX, Inc. as a new reseller of Konica Minolta’s FD- Series Spectrodensitometers.

CHROMiX is the leading provider of technical services and reseller of graphic arts products. They are uniquely positioned as both a software developer as well as a reseller, making them unique in the industry. ColorThink Pro, Maxwell, and Curve2 are three color management software products created by and with CHROMiX which have been widely adapted.

“CHROMiX’s reputation for great customer service as well as a leading voice of color management know-how was a key factor in selecting them as a reseller of the Konica Minolta instruments” said Russell Doucette, Business Development Manager for KMSA.  “We look forward to CHROMiX supporting us with our growing product line of instruments and software for the offset and digital printing markets as well as quality control and formulation.”

CHROMiX has taken on the FD series product line because of its cutting edge approach to address the M0, M1 and M2 standards. “Offering our customers cutting edge products and software to meet their needs has always been priority one”, says Steve Upton, President of CHROMiX, Inc. “We believe the products brought forth by Konica Minolta will allow our customers yet another choice for measuring and achieving the best color accuracy.”

Learn more about the FD Series spectrodensitometer by visiting our website today.

Tips and Tricks for ColorThink

http://youtu.be/tXQUPe29YmY 
    I have just posted on our YouTube account the first of (what might be) a series of short movies detailing how to do some tip or trick in ColorThink. Most people nowadays like to see a piece of software demonstrated in action rather than having to read a manual about it. It just somehow makes something easier to understand if you can actually watch somebody walk through it. This first video demonstrates how to use ColorThink Pro to check optimum ink limiting from a measured linearization file for a RIP.

These will also be posted in the ColorWiki:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/ColorThink_Pro_Tips_and_Tricks_-_Videos

Linearization and Optimization

 
Check it out. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you would like to see in the future. This topic came to us because a customer filled out a "Feature Request" - wanting us to add this feature in a future version of ColorThink. I had the pleasure of showing him how he could already do this using the current version of ColorThink Pro!

Datacolor announces the Spyder4

Just when you think X-Rite has cornered the market on display calibrators with its new i1 Display Pro, here comes Datacolor with a new Spyder4!

This new device has 7 color sensors instead of the the usual 3.  The software has added capability to do uniformity testing, better matching of multiple monitors, and they will be providing some means of correcting color on an iPhone/iPad.


I'll be looking forward to testing this in the future.

http://download.datacolor.eu/newsletter/2012-01-05-US/