An interior design company in Chelsea had contacted us asking for a Quato display so they could match the set up in their Milan office. They bought a Intelli Proof 270, and also a day of my time to install it, train them and profile their printers.

As soon as I began to unpack the 270 I started noticing small differences, even down to the evident care taken with the packaging. EIZO and NEC hoods are always a fiddle to fit, even if you have done it before. You have to clips lots of bits of black plastic into black holes around the back of the monitor. The Quato came with a three part metal hood that slid easily together and then attached securely to the velcro already on the display.

Once I’d connected the screen and booted up the computer I was even more impressed. Uniformity is often an issue with larger screens, obviously EIZO ColorEdge and NEC SpectraView screens have tight tolerances but I know the standards Quato use a just a bit tighter and with the direct 14 area backlight and active uniformity compensation on the Quato I really could see no variation across an plain gray desktop pattern. If any variation does emerge as the screen ages it can be sent back and have the uniformity compensation updated.

Calibration was quick and easy with the iColorDisplay software and the display matched the prints pretty much exactly. I wanted to take the screen back and put it on my own desk.

The really curious thing is that the 270 is actually cheaper than the NEC SpectraView 271 or the EIZO ColorEdge CG275W, and the same is true of the 242 compared to it’s 24 inch rivals. The 240 LED model has a colour gamut that exceeds the EIZO and NEC models and isn’t that much more. Have a look at http://www.nativedigital.com/quato for more details.

Moving forward with bigger displays!

Quato are a company continuously looking to develop new products that meet the changing needs of their users. To this end, they have just announced two new 42 inch displays.

The new Intelli Proof 420 excellence offers a perfect environment for colour critical presentations in photo studios, marketing agencies and design branch. Thanks to the 93 % Adobe RGB match, the Intelli Proof 420 ex is optimised for photographic applications and presentations.

Moreover, the Proof View 700-42 proof display for colour control directly on the press console or in a stationary proof station with ISO 3664-compliant luminance is available now.

Both displays have an active 25-area uniformity control and are hardware calibrated, of course.

You can purchase Quato monitors from your colour specialist reseller, or from Native Digital.

PrintFactory and Proofmaster 4.2.3 is a minor update release for the PrintFactory and ProofMaster range, introducing fixes for problems discovered by customers in the
current version and some updated or new drivers.

This release brings support for the following new devices:

• Durst Rho 700 Presto
• Canon IOS on Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7

General improvements:

• A number of problems (queue layout tab, margins, border marker) linked to multi-page documents were solved.
• Some icons no longer disappear on Mac OS X 10.7.3.
• Indexed CMYK images no longer corrupted after applying CMYK profiles.
• Spurious silkscreen halftone dots were removed.
• A problem with the zoom tool interfering with rectangular selection after multiple uses was solved.
• Importing X-Rite i1 iSis linearization measurements no longer fails.

For more information about specific features or problems, contact support at support@print-factory.net or support@proofmaster.net.

PrintFactory and ProofMaster 4.2.3 is a free update for all existing 4.x users. An upgrade path is available for users of previous versions; contact us for more information.

We are providing the colour management expertise to get all 40 printers matching to the various printing standards that the magazines use.

The client has had copiers for internal proofing for sometime but they weren’t really accurate enough to use as a proper proof, meaning that most of the magazines were paying for expensive external inkjet proofs that were certified to match the ISO 12647-7 standard for accuracy. This was costing the company hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. So when the existing contract for the copiers came up for renewal they started looking for a better solution.

The Xerox Color 550 is without doubt the best colour copier I have ever worked with. It’s a got a colour space just larger than ISO Coated v2/FOGRA39L and it is incredibly stable, delivering the same print quality first thing in the morning when it’s cold or when it’s been used all day. Just with conventional ICC profiles I got it to match the ISO 12647-7 standard for digital proofs. However, to get the proofs even closer to the standard we are using Oris Press Matcher to build device link profiles for each copier and then uploaded them to the FreeFlow RIP that drives the 550. A device link profile is direct conversion between two colour spaces. The Press Matcher software lets us take repeated measurements of the copier output and iteratively refine the link until we get well within the ISO tolerances, true the proofs are not as close to the standard as an inkjet proof would be, but the price per print is pence rather than pounds.

We put the first live printer into one of the clients magazine titles this week and even before we’d finished calibrating the Xerox Color 550 and building the device link the users were amazed at the improvement over the old copier, the colours were better and they could see shadow detail that was previously being lost. Once we’d finished the device link they compared the Xerox Color 550 proofs to their external inkjet proofs and they were very close, and in some cases the Xerox Color 550 proofs were closer to the printed magazine, and it’s a very prestigious high quality magazine where colour reproduction really counts.

In some cases the Xerox Color 550 proofs were closer to the printed magazine than the previously used external inkjet proofs.

In addition to colour managing the Xerox Color 550s we are also responsible for calibrating and profiling all the colour critical monitors. They mostly have NEC Multi-Sync 2690s. Using i1 DIsplay Pro calibrators we’ve profiled all the screens in that one magazine and using the Display QA feature we’ve checked the screen against the same ISO standard we are using on the printers and have got really good matches. The users now have accurate monitors they can soft-proof on and accurate in-house proofing. The retoucher on the magazine said we’d taken all the guess work out his job, he’d no longer have to wait a day for a proof or just hope an image came out OK in the magazine. He’d see it on screen and see it on the 550 proof.

Client Comment: You’ve taken all the guess work out of my job… I no longer have to wait a day for a proof or just hope that an image will come out OK in the finished magazine – I can see it on screen and see it on the Xerox 550 proof. Thank you!

The new X-Rite i1 Profiler is available as the following products:

• X-Rite i1 Basic Pro, comes with i1 Pro spectrophotometer (only monitor profiling enabled – can be upgraded in the future as required)
• X-Rite i1 Photo Pro, comes with i1 Pro spectrophotometer (Monitor, RGB printer profiling and camera workflow)
• X-Rite i1 Publish Pro, comes with i1 Pro spectrophotometer (Monitor, RGB & CMYK+n printer profiling etc)
• X-Rite i1 Publish – just the software (RGB & CMYK+n workflow). Works with your existing i1 Pro or ISIS measuring device.
• X-Rite i1 Publish Upgrade A – for existing owners of i1 Pro solutions (except i1 Basic, OEM and LT versions – check with us for eligibility), ProfileMaker 5 and Monaco Profiler 4 users,
• X-Rite i1 Profiler Upgrade B – for existing owners of the i1Basic Pro;  i1Basic; i1Design LT; i1Photo LT; i1Pro OEM

We’ll start with RGB printer profiling, in my tests the new software produces profiles that are noticeably better in many areas than i1 Match, ProfileMaker or Monaco Profiler. Also for users of i1 Match the new software includes advanced functionality previous only available in ProfileMaker or Profiler, but before we delve into the RGB printer profiling workflow it’s worth saying a few things about the general interface.

The opening screen or page of the software has several useful features including the ability to automatically check for software updates, access information about the software online and most important of all access training videos. One of my standard pieces of support advice is RTFM – Read The Flippin’ Manual. I’m sorry, but having written software manuals in the past I’m one of those people that reads the supplied manual for whatever they buy, it usually saves me a lot of time and lets me find features that might remain hidden if I didn’t know they were there. However, I realise not everybody gets on well with software manuals, apart from maybe as a cure for insomnia, so what I suggest is that the first time you open i1 Profiler you have a cup of coffee to hand and sit back and watch the training videos supplied via the handy button on the screen. They cover most of the functions of the software and are clear and very easy to understand.

i1 Profiler has two modes, Basic and Advanced. The Advanced mode really comes into its own when you’re profiling CMYK printers and for a lot of users doing just RGB printer profiling using the Basic mode will just stop you being presented with options that you’d always leave to default anyway, but in the interest of full disclosure I’ll write the rest of the blog assuming you are going to use the Advanced mode.

i1 Profiler uses a a step by step process and the options for each page can be saved into a workflow. Default workflows are supplied but you can also save your own to suit your own kit or processes. A workflow can include options such as the number of patches, page size and profile settings. Saved workflows, previous profiles and other saved data can be dragged and dropped onto the buttons in a workflow to set the options.

The first page, Patch Set, in an RGB printer profiling workflow defines the number of patches you want to measure. You can measure as few as 400 or up to 6000. In my experience you get little benefit from measuring over 1000 patches for an RGB printer profile. You have the option of scrambling or randomizing the order of the patches just in case there is any difference across the sheet, but there shouldn’t be on a inkjet printer. Once you have selected the number of patches you can then move on to the next page, Test Chart.

The Test Chart page allows you to define what measuring instrument you are using, the page size of your printer and other physical options relating to how the chart is laid out. You might have to step back and forth between Patch Set and Test Chart until you find a number of patches that fit on a certain number of pages. Personally, I think it would be better if they combined the Patch Set and Test Chart pages so you could define the page size and instrument then click a button to fill the page with patches. Anyway, once you have define the parameters you can then print the target or save it as a TIFF file.

The Measurement page is obviously where you connect your measuring device and measure the colours, and pretty much does what it says in a similar way to other profiling software. The next page, Lighting, is a new option that will be unfamiliar to users of i1 Match. Printer profiles can be built based on an expected viewing light to help improve the accuracy of the profile under that lighting condition. For example, if you were producing prints for a gallery that had a particular type of lights you could measure those lights and then use that measurement data when the profile was created to make the prints look good under that light source. Usually, however, you don’t know where the print will be viewed so the best thing for the vast majority of users is to leave the lighting options set to the default of D50 and skip the Lighting page.

Profile Settings also allows a lot of control over areas that most users will leave to default. The perceptual mapping options allow you to increase or decrease Contrast or Saturation and also the Neutralize gray option allows you to choose if gray colours are mapped relative to the colour of the paper or more absolutely neutral. The effect of these options will only be visible when printing with the perceptual rendering intent and I’d recommend first building a profile with the default options (all to zero) before changing anything. The effects are subtle but can be quite pleasing. The Tables option govern the size of the tables within the profile, again there isn’t much need to deviate from the defaults. By the way the defaults are displayed as ‘Custom’ for some reason – one of the issues I reported back during testing they didn’t have time to fix. Advanced sets other options most users won’t touch, you can find out what any option means by activating the Help function by clicking on the question mark at the bottom left of the screen and putting the cursor over the item you want explained.

The final ICC Profile page lets you save the profile. A 3D gamut graph of the profile is then displayed. You should then go and test the profile by outputting a few files before trying the new profile optimization and verification options, but more about those in the next blog.

If you want to test the quality of the profiles from the new software then we’ve already swapped our custom profiling service (http://www.nativedigital.com/products/Custom-ICC-Printer-Profile.html) over to using the new software.

“Colour Guru in One Day” Training with Hands On Experience

Colour management experts The Colour Collective, are offering the ultimate one day course offering hands on ’try before you buy’ experience coupled with expert training on some of the most advanced Colour Management equipment available including X-Rite’s new i1 Profiler software.

Aimed at photographers, designers, wide format printers or pre-press professionals who want to understand how to fully control colour, achieving accurate and predictable results from input to output across a color critical workflow, “Colour Guru in One Day” is delivered by colour management expert & author, Rob Griffith.

Colour Guru in One Day will be held at X-Rite’s UK HQ near Manchester in their fully equipped training centre. With dates available in March, May & June each course is limited to only 8 attendees so everyone will get one-to-one attention & have the time to use and understand the equipment.

Benefiting from a blend of theory to understand the foundations of Colour Management combined with practical exercises that include profile creation, implementation, setting up the colour management options in applications such as Adobe Photoshop attendees are also welcome to bring questions and issues for open discussion on common workflow issues.

Demystifying what is often seen as a complex subject, course modules include:

• Colour Theory
• How Colour Management Works
• Calibrating & Profiling Monitors
• Using Applications to Colour Manage your Images
• Colour Managing Digital Photography
• Profiling RGB Printers
• Profiling CMYK Printers
• Proofing & Press Standards
• Evaluating Colour & Fine Tuning Results
• Colour Managed Workflows

The course is the latest to launch following a range of successful courses by Griffith. He commented, “The feedback we’ve had from past courses indicates our clients are benefiting from increased critical colour quality, which is saving them both time and money, in addition to improving their end results.”

Rob Griffith, author of Practical Colour Management has previously run training courses for X-Rite, Canon Europe, The Royal Photographic Society, The British Museum and has many years of colour management experience in a wide variety of different workflows and market sectors.

Colour Guru in One Day will cost £150.00 + vat per attendee with group discounts available. All attendees will receive a free copy of Practical Colour Management, course notes, email & telephone support after the course & exclusive discounts on products. Lunch & Refreshments will also be provided.

Dates available: 30^th March, 11^th May & 22^nd June 2011

Book Online: www.colourcollective.co.uk (available shortly) or for further information, dates available, costs and booking enquiries contact Sales Director Tony Kirk on 01902 833800 or tonykirk@colourcollective.co.uk

Bespoke onsite courses on almost any colour management topic or solution are also available.

FOR PRESS ONLY:

About The Colour Collective:

Formed by experienced colour management and pre-press professionals Rob Griffith, Tony Kirk and Martin Doyle, The Colour Collective provides a range of products and services specifically designed to offer cost effective and scalable colour management solutions for every level of customer, from photographers, designers and advertising agencies to printers, repro houses and media groups.

Free ColorChecker Passport DNG ProfileManager & Interactive Training – Simply Register Your Passport Today!

X-Rite now provides even more value for your ColorChecker Passport. You’ll receive download links for these tools when you register your Passport on line at XritePhoto.com/Register:

• DNG ProfileManager Software
• Interactive Training Video

DNG ProfileManager

The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport DNG ProfileManager software provides a single list of all installed DNG profiles, including non-printing image data such as file name, camera, light-source(s), and creation date. It also filters by camera or it can sort by any column header to provide the ability to correctly rename profiles (both internal and external names). Users can easily enable/disable profiles to prevent profile overload in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and quickly collect and export DNG profiles for backup or distribution.

Supported operating systems: Windows XP, Vista and 7; Mac OSX 10.5 and 10.6
Supported languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese

Interactive Training Video

The ColorChecker Passport Interactive Training Video provides clear easy to follow instruction on how to use the Passport in both Raw and JPEG workflows. You’ll learn how to white balance in your camera and in your software, how to use the Passport to evaluate exposure and how to correct for under- or over-exposure. You’ll also learn how to correctly use the Passport to create custom camera profiles in a Raw workflow for even more accurate color. This video is divided into easy-to-follow sections and can be viewed in any order to fit your needs (English only).

Register your ColorChecker Passport online today and get all the benefits: http://www.xritephoto.com/register

I recently visited Quato in Germany as part of the process of The Colour Collective becoming a reseller of their monitors. We have been reselling colour critical displays from EIZO and NEC for many years and I’ve been involved previously with older marques such as Barco and PressView but still I was very impressed with Quato as a company and their products. It is rare in these days of mass manufacture to find a company producing small numbers of high quality products to very exacting standards.

Quato only produce a few thousand screens a year. They are produced in factory in Taiwan that is shared between Quato and several medical monitor manufacturers so the very high standard of quality assurance are used. When it arrives in Germany each screen is checked by hand. It is warmed up and calibrated and only passed for sale if it passes very stringent uniformity tests – much tighter than their competitors. If the screen drifts out of uniformity during its life it can go back to Germany for readjustment. Their dead pixel policy is very good as well. They guarantee no sub-pixel failures in the centre of the screen and no more than 2 or 3, depending on the model, over the rest of the screen.

Their iColor Display software that calibrates the software is packed full of useful features including the UGRA UDACT software for checking that the calibration and uniformity conforms to elements of ISO 12646 and the requirements of printing standards organizations such as FOGRA. It is also unusual in that it will calibrate not only Quato displays via the hardware connection but also other displays via software calibration, enabling both a main and palette monitor to be profiled by the same software for example. They bundle the X-Rite DTP94 with iColor Display because they have found it to be the most reliable device and X-Rite manufacture it specially for them. The companies active participation in many industry bodies such as FOGRA and the ICC is a measure of their commitment to colour science and quality.They also produce print profiling software that they claim is far more accurate than others. I’ll be testing that soon.

If you are looking for absolutely the best colour critical monitors on the market and need very high degrees of colour accuracy for soft-proofing or retouching then you should certainly consider a Quato. Such quality doesn’t come without a corresponding price tag though so these screens aren’t for everyone but as I said if you need to go that one step further in search of colour excellence then Quato could be the answer.

You can purchase Quato monitors in the UK from our online partner, Native Digital.

Come and visit us in Hall 11,  stand F222 at IPEX from May 18th – 25th at the NEC, Birmingham.

We’ll be showing the latest versions of the ProofMaster and PrintFactory RIPs by FourPees, along with Quato monitors.

You can register your attendance at IPEX here.

January 27th 2010 – Colour management specialists The Colour Collective announce the release of version 4 of the ProofMaster and PrintFactory RIPs from Four Pees.

ProofMaster offers a complete proofing solution for offset, gravure, flexo, newsprint and packaging simulation. ProofMaster’s sister brand PrintFactory offers a completely new point of view on banner and sign production. In this environment, PrintFactory becomes the heart of the production process offering job preparation and editing, printing, cutting and proofing from the same platform.

Version 4 of both RIPs have improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 and Windows 7, new support contracts, additional drivers for new printers and a generic printer driver allowing the RIP to control any printer.

ProofMaster Certify and ProofMaster Plus (renamed for this release) benefit from improvements in nesting and colour management but PrintFactory has the lion share of the new features. These include:

• New Applications
  • PrintFactory WebFront
    • PrintFactory WebPortal for job submission and job preview
  • PrintFactory Output Inspector
    • 100% output preview and control, including raster preview
  • PrintFactory Media Manager
    • Allows for easy management of different media profiles
• Improved PrintFactory Editor
  • Full Color Management control
  • Full control over Printer and Media
  • Get a color-accurate view through built-in softproofing
  • More Adobe Creative Suite Look and feel
  • Added shortcuts for increased operator productivity
• Improved Super Tile Tool
  • Any tiling setup is possible
  • All tools for vehicle wrap setups
  • Multi tiling setup per file
  • Mirror tiling for vehicle reverse side
  • Save setup as template for fully automated scaling and tiling
• Improved White ink and Varnish tool
• “Cutting edge” Contour cutting technology
  • Full flexibility in defining and generating contour cutting lines
  • Full iCut and GTK support
  • Barcode support for most cutters
• PrintFactory Spectro LFP
• Spectrophotometer especially designed for LPF applications. Reads transparent and thick media

Customers who have bought either RIP since October 2009 are entitled to a free upgrade. Upgrade pricing depends on the version and options already purchased. Customers should call Tony Kirk on 0845 0946062 for more details.

About Four Pees
Named after the four P’s of marketing – product, price, place and promotion – Four Pees’ mission is to add value to technology developers, resellers and end-users in print and publishing markets by providing dedicated marketing services, a skilled sales-force, product know-how and implementation services. Four Pees is worldwide distributor of ProofMaster, for colour-accurate contract proofs and PrintFactory, a production suite for large format printing.
Four Pees was established in 2007 by Tom Peire and has grown into a team of seasoned marketing, sales and service professionals. For more information, please go to www.fourpees.com.

About The Colour Collective
The Colour Collective exists to help customers achieve excellent results in their colour workflow, weather design, press, photography or video based, buy advising and supplying the very best hardware and software solutions, consultancy and training. For more information, please contact www.colourcollective.co.uk or call 0845 094 6062.

As well as the above RGB image (also available as CMYK – contact us if needed), we’ve also included a ‘Gradient Test’ file and a ‘Square Black Level Test’.

The files are all packed together as a ‘ZIP’ file. It’s quite large (>10Mb) so be patient as it downloads!

Click on the ‘ZIP’ icon to download them to your computer:

For details on using them, please refer to our Practical Colour Managment book.