RE: Colorimeter vs. Spectro
RE: Colorimeter vs. Spectro
- Subject: RE: Colorimeter vs. Spectro
- From: Armand Rosenberg <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:11:55 -0500
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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