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.

CHROMiX is the WINNER of the 2022

Barbieri Excellence Award for Business Performance

CHROMiX has been selected by Barbieri for it's Excellence Award! 

"CHROMiX develops software for the digital printing market and spectral color data is a cornerstone for its software evaluations. We found there there is a deep understanding in how to connect and integrate spectral data and color measurement technology which allows customers to gather the highest accuracy."

The feeling is mutual. We love Barbieri devices and work hard to incorporate effective and seamless compatibility with our software.

Here is a link to Barbieri's Hall of Excellence for more depth in details of this award.

Color Management conference is ON!

The Color Management Conference put on by Printing United Alliance is full speed ahead this year. This annual (until last year) conference is going to be at La Jolla just North of San Diego - a welcome location in January after a wild winter in North America.

I am happy to be presenting a new session at the conference. Following up on the fun we had last time we met (below) - this year my session is on the Secrets of Color Management. 

January 22 - 25th, 2022

https://color.printing.org

Brobygrafiska

 Curve4 in Scandinavia!  

Brobygrafiska  is the top graphic arts school for graphic artists in Sweden and Denmark.  As they say on their website, they have their roots in printing, and they look forward to digital innovation of the future.  Located in Sunne, Sweden, they are now using Curve4 to share the beauty of G7 with fans in Scandinavia.  It's great to see more G7 goodness spread around the world! 

Mycket bra!

Say goodbye to an old friend

i1Pro - Rev A

You knew this day was coming color management geeks.  With the release of its latest version of i1Profler, X-Rite has revealed that its flagship software will no longer support the earliest models of the i1Pro spectrophotometer. 

The i1Pro first came to market in 2001 which is a million years ago in digital imaging years. It has been a stalwart component of the color management toolbox for years.  Even after X-Rite came out with the i1Pro 2 and now the i1Pro 3 & the i1Pro 3 Plus,  there were quite a few of these original units floating around in the industry.   If you still have one of these older i1Pros (Rev A, B, C or D), then know that they will no longer operate on the newest version of i1Profiler: version 3.2 or newer.  

G7: How a big company does it

Our friend Jeff Collins,
and another friend, Mike Todryk, of IWCO Direct have a great discussion on how Mike was able to take a company with an enormous variety of printing devices & technologies, and transform it so that they know where their color is, they have their color under control, and they maintain a "shared neutral appearance" - through the wonder of G7.  Mike shares details about the software they used, and what they did to improve procedures for saving time, money and hitting industry standard color.   A special bonus near the end includes the mistakes that brand owners commonly make when communicate color to printers.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/episodes/iwco-direct-the-benchmark-of-a-process-control-culture

24. IWCO Direct: The Benchmark of a Process Control Culture Mike Todryk elegantly walks through what anyone would describe as THE absolute benchmark process control company - across (3) facilities, (13) Continuous Web Litho Presses, (10) Continuous Web Inkjet Presses, (10) Flexo Presses, (3) Digital EP Presses, (2) Sheetfed Offset Presses, (3) Contract Proofers - maintained by (4) in-house G7® Experts.

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!

Stan Lee needed G7

As the passing of comic book creator Stan Lee has been in the news lately, we are reminded of the necessity of proper color management.

The original design of The Incredible Hulk had his skin be gray, but a problem with the printing press / ink on the original runs of the comic book caused the gray to look green instead.  If they had used the G7 methodology back in 1962, the Incredible Hulk might be gray today!

Now you can apply your color knowledge to this quiz:

https://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/the-incredible-hulk-was-originally-what-color/

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.

Curve4 new features - the video

Steve Upton and Don Hutcheson explained the new features of Curve4 recently in a webinar.  There are so many new tools and modules in this new version of Curve that it really helps to watch the makers explain it all.  

You can watch the YouTube video of the whole presentation here:

https://youtu.be/sbnR_nYStUk

Or go directly to the highlight of your choice:

Built-in measuring ability

The calibrate tool

New targets available for Curve4

New ink limiting feature

Re-calibrate using smaller targets

The Blend Tool

Questions and Answers

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.

A new Measurement Tool

CHROMiX has been quietly adding the ability to directly drive a number of popular spectrophotometers in the industry, originally for the Client software that works with our Maxwell database.  We will be rolling that same capability out to our new software products as well.   People have been begging us for this feature for years!   Besides the Maxwell Client, you can see this feature in Curve4 Verify - recently released.  Expect to see this even more in the future.

I have produced some videos to show how this new measurement module works.
 X-Rite i1Pro,  X-Rite iSis  X-Rite IO table   Barbieri LFP  KonicaMinolta FD-9

PIA Color Conference going to be a great event

This year's Color Conference is taking place Dec 3-6 at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak in Phoenix.

CHROMiX will be there en force again this year (we've attended and presented every year since the conference's inception), with Steve Upton, Rick Hatmaker and Pat Herold all in attendance.

Steve Upton is serving on the advisory board for the event and is also presenting a session called "Density Today: Avoid or Embrace? Both!". You might think "Density? Really?" Yes! In today's modern, colorimetric, G7 world, density still shows up regularly. It's VERY important to know when it's a bad idea and why, even when your most important customer continues to swear by it.

Also, this year's conference is Curve4's coming-out party. CHROMiX and HutchColor are readying the fourth major release of the world's de-facto standard G7 calibration tool. We'll be demonstrating the integrated measurement capabilities in our booth (driving Konica Minolta, Techkon and X-Rite hardware) and serving up all the juicy details at our vendor session. Between the full-featured Verify functions, powerful enhancements to Calibration, and a new Blend tool, Curve4 is an indispensable tool for G7 implementation.

So come by the show! Airfares are cheap, hotels are reasonable and if you contact us directly we can give you a super special secret code that knocks $100 off the entrance fee.

For more info, go here

Curve4 VERIFY release brings full G7 Master verification with a clear graphical display

Release: Sept 14, 2016

Seattle WA: Curve4 VERIFY release brings full G7 Master verification with a clear graphical display.


CHROMiX and HutchColor today released Curve4 VERIFY, the first component of the anticipated followup to the industry-standard G7 Calibration and Verification toolset.

"Curve4 VERIFY fills an overdue need for an affordable, full-function tool to check G7 Master test prints before they are submitted" said HutchColor's Don Hutcheson, creator of G7 and co-author of the G7 Master Certification specification.

Idealliance expanded and revamped the G7 Master Certification process in 2015. Until now there's been an absence of straight-forward verification tools that are appropriate for any user from brand owners and print buyers through to the most demanding print providers.

Curve4's VERIFY tool provides clear results that are precisely engineered to confirm eligibility for G7 Master Certification and verify high quality printing and proofing.

"Expert users can create pre-set References for any combination of G7 Master parameters, including G7 Grayscale, Targeted or Colorspace, all standard G7-based CRPCs, SCCA On or Off, NativeCMY, Production or Proof tolerances and even G7 Screenprint.", continued Hutcheson. "The bonus Proof verification feature allows non-technical print buyers to quickly and easily check the accuracy of supplied proofs with a simple hand-held measuring device."

Flexibility:

Measurements can be obtained from several sources including files, direct measurement or 1-click download from Maxwell, CHROMiX's cloud-based color monitoring system. A variety of measurement devices are directly integrated into the tool, including Barbieri Spectro LFP, Konica Minolta FD-9, Techkon SpectroDrive, and X-Rite i1Pro, i1iO, and i1iSis for hand-measured or fully-automated measurement. Curve4 streamlines measurement by using targets created by Barbieri Chart Generator, X-Rite i1Profiler, ColorPort, and MeasureTool and also provides full access to M0-M3 illuminant options, reflective / transmissive modes, aperture size and single or multiple measurements per patch (as the instrument supports)

"Curve4 VERIFY gains powerful measurement and SmartTarget technologies from Maxwell, allowing unprecedented flexibility with zero configuration." explained Steve Upton, President of CHROMiX, "The measurement tools also inherit from our years of Maxwell development so they are streamlined, stable and have some great features. One such feature is the newly-introduced MemoryScan function that stores the position of a target (for iO, LFP and KM FD-9) and quickly scans other targets placed in the same position."

Curve4 VERIFY accepts any target combination to create verifications. The G7 ColorSpace compliance test, for example, requires patches from both the P2P and IT8 targets. Users can bring multiple targets into the VERIFY tool and the required patches are automatically extracted for easy & quick reporting.

Availability:

Curve4 VERIFY is available immediately. The full release, including CALIBRATE and BLEND tools, is expected to ship near the end of this year.

Upgrades are available for previous Curve owners.

CHROMiX and HutchColor will both be at SGIA this week (see us in the Barbieri booth #1499 on Thursday) and also at GraphExpo in Orlando later this month. Please contact us directly for a demonstration or with any questions.


Please go to http://www.chromix.com/curve4 for more information

---

HutchColor, LLC.

In 1995 Don Hutcheson formed the first ICC color management consultancy. Since then HutchColor, LLC has trained many of the world’s top printers, publishers, photographers, agencies and designers and pioneered such techniques as HiFi color, digital proofing, RGB workflows and soft proofing.  While chairman of the IDEAlliance GRACoL® committee (2004-7) Hutcheson invented the IDEAlliance G7® method.  G7 has revolutionized the printing industry and made standardized printing and proofing easier and more accessible to thousands of users worldwide.  HutchColor continues to teach G7, color management and standardized printing and proofing to a wide range of clients. For more information go to www.hutchcolor.com.

CHROMiX Inc.

CHROMiX, Inc., the creator of ColorThink, ColorThink Pro, Maxwell, the co-creator of IDEALink Curve, Curve2, and Curve3, was founded in 1998 to provide technical services and products to businesses in content-production industries. CHROMiX dedicates years of industry experience to improving color management and image fidelity, and combines an excellent suite of tools, including its own popular ColorThink products. With customers, dealers and partners in over 90 countries, CHROMiX is uniquely qualified to serve the imaging industries. More information is available at www.chromix.com.


Trademarks: IDEALink, G7® and GRACoL® are registered trademarks of Idealliance. All other trademarks are property of their rightful owners.