Printing with No Color Management, Apple and X-Rite
Printing with No Color Management, Apple and X-Rite
- Subject: Printing with No Color Management, Apple and X-Rite
- From: Scott Geffert <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:54:06 -0400
"X-Rite may also could use its position being the chair of the ICC to
involve the color community for cooperative creation of test files and
guidelines to check and document the behaviour of different printing
path configurations (OS-Version, Sending Application, Driver). The
results of such tests could be published in a wiki at the ICC website".
Interesting observation.
Everyone here is very close to X-Rite (arguably too close to X-Rite). We all Know that since X-Rite took over Gretag Macbeth they lost talent and experienced a serious innovation hiatus until very recently. Lets not discount that fact that this "consolidation" opened the door for the various parties (Apple/Adobe) to abandon color management to some extent. Could it be that the current head of ICC (the most vital link to industry and color) has been hamstrung by management of a short-sighted company?
I just ran into Russel Doucette (my old Gretag Macbeth sales representative) at a Minolta 3D workshop today. The conversation brought back memories of the good old days when our sales representatives actually spent time in the field with customers. During this time period Russel and Brian Ashe would regularly work with me at my various museum client sites and this field work directly fed back to R&D. I remember Brian Ashe was amazed to be able to be next to an original Vermeer painting during our evaluation of the last meaningful update of Profile Maker. These people took a personal interest in color and the company backed them up. Interaction with X-Rite has been reduced to impersonal canned Web X powerpoint presentations.
Aside from the issues with X-Rite, I feel like the ICC itself fell asleep to some extent and we are all feeling the fallout. Color management and process control are more vital than ever, and as Chris pointed out this is NOT a money problem, it is a vision problem. From what I understand the ICC consortium is funded by the same companies that we are speaking of. These companies need to look at color as a strategically important technology, not some sidebar issue. Happy productive customers drive revenue growth, and color-correct media drives all commerce. Color ultimately impacts everyone in the chain from content creator to the ultimate consumer. The fact that the core ICC technology has been quite stable and that the required technical elements are well known it is incredibly frustrating to watch things degrade.
I wonder how we can get the ICC to become more relevant during this challenging period? There are so many people that want to help, and we all know that all of this technology works if we can only establish a few ground rules in terms of UI across the tools that touch color. This includes video, 3D , design, and all forms of imaging because at this stage all media is digital and needs to interoperate on a global scale. The future of visual communication is larger than Adobe, Apple, Epson or HP and all parties need to pull together. Yes a properly managed color workflow will level the playing field to some extent, but when we enjoy the benefits of the world wide web it is because wherever you go the rules of the road are clearly defined. I believe that color needs to mature to this same model to establish universal color communication as a user right, not some loose framework open to corporate bastardization. The mentality of "we support ICC but in our own very special way" needs to come to an end.
As a consultants I think we all would love the opportunity to help people take technology further. Instead we find ourselves in so called "twilight zone" where customers are paying us as extended R&D labs for some of the world's largest corporations. This is simply not right.
For what its worth.....
Scott
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