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RE: Colorimeter vs. Spectro

Once again, science meets marketing, and marketing wins. Give up all hope, all ye who enter here (into the world of commerce).

Yes a spectrometer gives discrete points. So does a colorimeter. Difference is, a spectrometer gives you a lot more of those points. That's pretty much the whole difference. Spectrometers don't any discard data, but their (mis)users might. Yes, for good signal to noise, a spectrometer requires a better detector than a colorimeter, driving up its price. This is part of the price you pay for the added flexibility of a spectrometer.

How is displays vs print relevant in this discussion? I don't see the relevance. (I'm not sure what the point is here, but speaking of X-Rite: remember the Colortron? Wasn't that an ancient spectrometer for both displays and print? Yes, it was. A great little toy, in its day. But I digress.)

A colorimeter is essentially a special-purpose spectrometer. Another phrase might be "dumbed-down" -- but I wouldn't want to offend someone. The derogatory characterization would only apply to uses for which the colorimeter wasn't designed, but which a spectrometer could easily handle due to its superior flexibility. This is all assuming the user is not a misuser, which is not always a safe assumption.

There is no fundamental difference in what the two instruments actually do. One may use a grating and the other a set of filters, but that's not a fundamental difference from a scientific viewpoint. It's an engineering difference. A special-purpose instrument can of course be equivalent to and more efficient than a more general-purpose instrument in specific situations. The downside is that the specialized gizmo lacks flexibility. A well-designed colorimeter could be equivalent to a(n optimized) spectrometer in situations that are within the design parameters, for specific applications. The performance would then be equivalent, and its use more efficient, in these limited circumstances (and if these uses cover all of your needs, then you would say that the instruments are equivalent, which would be true in a limited sense). Ultimately, color management is going to depend more on how the information from the instrument is interpreted and used rather than on the type of instrument, as long as the instrument provides appropriate information -- and both types can do this in the present state of the art, it would appear. In circumstances not anticipated by the designers, the spectrometer offers more data and hence more flexibility (likely at a higher price) -- but whether this will help the enduser or not will depend mostly on the software that interprets and uses that data. I can think of situations where a colorimeter simply wouldn't be able to cope (would not provide enough useful data), so new hardware would be the only solution -- whereas those same situations could be handled by a generic spectrometer with a tweak in the software that runs it. The converse situations do not exist. Why? Because one instrument is a special-purpose version of the other. The mantra here is flexibility. Albeit at a higher price, perhaps.

Of course, for mass production, it could turn out that one instrument has a higher profit margin than the other at a certain price point, with no noticeable effect (or at least a tolerable effect) on color management results. This is a different type of science: it's called economics (not physics). If I'd been smart, I would have studied economics and I could probably now afford all the great new toys being discussed on this list (although I might not understand how they work: life is full of compromises). The money is clearly in the market and its marketing, not in the physics without which there would be nothing to market. (I digress again.) Nevertheless, let's try to not get lost in half-baked marketing hype, on this list at least. Let's make this virtual place a sanctuary from profit-driven drivel. Marketing hype belongs in colorful glossy sales brochures and corporate websites, not on this list. IMHO.

Armand
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 >RE: Colorimeter vs. Spectro (From: Marc Levine <email@hidden>)



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