The Color Space

I'm Mark Pajari. I have been in the business of color reproduction for just over 20 years. Wow,has it been that long? How time flies when you’re having fun! In 1987 I had a head of thick blond hair. Today it is a nice shade of clear. I blame it on Johannes Gutenberg.

I began my career at Quad Graphics where I studied the inner workings of the pressroom, drum scanners, digital photography and Scitex imaging workstations. It was at Quad Graphics in 1993 where I got my first taste of color management technology as I researched ways to effectively separate RGB images coming off Kodak Photo CDs. Remember those?

In 1994 I started a digital imaging department at Ambrosi (large photo studio/agency) in Chicago and later did some color consulting work at other large ad agencies there.

My love of photography and color science brought me to Widen Enterprises in 2003. There you can find me basking in the balanced glow of a bank of 5000k lamps, wielding a blue Sharpie with authority, or holed up in my office where I continue to work on the cure for the common color separation.

I intend to use this blog to end world hunger, reduce tensions in the Middle East, and stop the wild fires. Along the way I hope to enlighten you on what’s new in the world of color management, color proofing, digital imaging, etc., and do so in a way that does not induce sudden drowsiness.

Things in this industry can change fast. Hold on, keep your lap bar snug against your waist, and your arms and legs inside the moving vehicle at all times. And stay tuned…

Last year, I published a blog called, Surround yourself with color. As long as it's gray! In the blog, I discussed how important viewing conditions were when evaluating color, and how surrounding colors affect how we see color.

Recently I came across a great website from the laboratory of Dale Purves, M.D. in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University. There are many interesting optical illusions that deal with color constancy, chromatic adaptation, color contrast, brightness contrast and other illusions that play tricks on the eye. All the illusions are interactive, allowing the viewer to mask off or adjust brightness on different parts of the image.

                 

These exercises underscore the importance of maintaining proper viewing conditions when making critical color decisions. Give it a look. You won't believe your eyes!

A third in a series of iPhone digital imaging app reviews...

Mill Colour by The Mill - Price: FREE

If all you want in a photo editor on the iPhone is simply a way to edit color - saturation, gamma, exposure, etc.. Then this app is for you. It offers an extremely precise way of adjusting color via a fine tuning dial. Think of a fine tuning knob on an old tube TV set...


              

Pros:

• Allows Very fine tuning of an image to edit color of a photograph via a scaled dial at the bottom of the screen.
• Edit control includes Lift, Gamma, Gain and Saturation
• A number of pre-defined image "looks" including, Golden, Print, Cross-processed, Chocolate, Noir (a dark, contrasty black and white), Instant, 70's (a washed-out warm look), Milky, Promo, and Bleached
• Easy to use interface
• It's FREE!

Cons:

• Lacks many traditional editing tools like clone, crop, sharpen/blur, noise reduction, painting tools, etc... But then again, this is designed as a color correction app only.
• No ability to share photos with social media sites like Twitter or Facebook (can only save to iPhone photo library)
• No ability to continue previous session if an image was not saved before closing app
• They spelled "color" wrong :)

A second in a series of iPhone digital imaging app reviews...

Photogene by Omer Shoor - Price: $1.99

Much like Photoforge that I discussed in yesterday's post, Photogene is a good all purpose image editor for the iPhone. Photogene includes a number of nice preset border treatments, but lacks painting tools like Photoforge.



                 

Pros:

• Very fast, responsive, immediate editing
• Interface is well designed, navigation is quick and easy
• Menus can disappear with a tap for full screen view
• Includes a number of nice preset frame treatments with a lot of custom control for images.
• Nice drop shadows and reflection.
• 8 special effects include sepia, black and white, pencil, and night vision.
• Ability to work in portrait of landscape mode.
• Ability to add text balloons.
• Share photos with Facebook, Twitter, or "Hall of Fame" online gallery

Cons:

• Lacks clone tool.
• Lacks any painting tools
• Lacks noise reduction feature.
• Lacks layering function.

This July will mark three years since Apple released the iPhone, forever changing the things we can do with a phone. I still find it difficult to call the iPhone a phone, because making a phone call is somewhere down the list of things I use my iPhone for. Reviewing and writing emails, surfing the Web, listening to or creating music, watching TV shows or movies on the plane, playing a game, checking a map/GPS, calculating a tip, catching up on the news, sports and weather are among the many things I use my iPhone for. With well over 100,000 applications for the iPhone, there is something for everyone. My iPhone even pops popcorn and pours beer (well, digitally, anyway).

The iPhone, especially the iPhone 3GS, is also a handy camera. Yes, I know, all cell phones have cameras in them now, nothing new there. And the iPhone still lacks a flash for low light situations to go along with the 3.0 megapixel camera. But when used in conjunction with many of the photographic editing apps, the iPhone becomes a nice little mobile digital imaging workstation. And with the ability to share the image in an email, Facebook, Twitter or Flickr you can instantly publish your masterpiece for the world to see. I subscribe to the theory that the best camera you have is the one that's with you when you see a great photo in front of your eyes.

So being the shutterbug and pixel junkie that I am, I thought I would do a few quick reviews of some of my favorite image editing apps for the iPhone. These will be applications that excel at one thing or another - color correction, image enhancement, painting, special effects, illustration, etc... To make this a quicker read, I will break them up into separate blog entries, so check back here to The Color Space daily for new reviews.  

Up first:

PhotoForge by Ghost Bird Software - Price: $2.99

If I could have only one app on my iPhone for image editing (I have many - duh), it might be this one. This app contains most of the common tools you need in a photo editor.




                    

Pros:

• It is one of the only editors that lets you adjust levels AND curves, and lets you do so in RGB, CMYK or Lab. Note that It does not actually change the color space of the image.
• It has a good assortment of filters and special effects, including posterize, sepia, dreamy, black and white, pencil, emboss, television, tilt shift generator and more
• It combines a nice brush tool with 8 different brush strokes and other painting functions like smudge
• You have the ability to begin with a blank canvas to create an illustration from scratch
• It is one of the only editors that has a clone stamp tool
• Unlimited undo and redo

Cons:

• Instructions claim you can edit in portrait or landscape, however, I haven't found that to be true
• No instructions or help (although it's pretty simple to figure everything out)
• No layering ability
• Lacks creative border treatments (if you're into that sort of thing)

So last night I was perusing the 12,000 channels that DirecTV beams into my home trying to find something - ANYTHING to watch that wasn't called something like, "Dancing with the Biggest Bachelor Star Looser Next Top Model Celebrity Apprentice Big Brother Housewives of American Idol Survivor Marry my Top Chef Dad in Hell's Kitchen Plus 8".... sigh...

Anyway, while somehow successfully avoiding "reality" TV, I came across a commercial for the new Sharp Aquos LED LCD TV with QuadPixel technology. Introduced at the giant Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in January and hitting the market this spring, the engineers at Sharp have added a yellow pixel to the familiar red, green and blue pixels.

Apparently the yellow that is created when red and green pixels hook up at full power was not saturated enough for Sharp, so they are giving yellow it's very own pixel living right there in between the blue and red pixels. According to Sharp, this expands the gamut from millions of colors to over a trillion. They expect RGBY technology to become the standard in the HDTV industry.



There is a lot of debate as to how many colors the human eye can see. It is generally believed to be under 10 million colors. But every human eye is different, and the truth is, nobody really knows how many colors we can see. The 24-bit computer monitor you are reading this on right now is capable of displaying 16,777,216 colors. I know this because I counted them while you were sleeping last night. And by the way, you should really clean up those dirty dishes piling up in your kitchen sink.

So if humans can only discern between a few million colors, why should our HDTVs show us more than a trillion colors? Isn't that overkill? Well, Sharp claims that the addition of the yellow pixel gives you better yellow and gold tones along with better Caribbean blue hues as well. This is important if you are watching a movie about a treasure chest of gold coins that washes up along a Jamaican beach.

Gillette didn't stop at three blades in their razors, and Sharp says it's not stopping at four pixels in their TVs. They are working on technology that will bring the two subtractive colors left out in the cold, cyan and magenta, to the big screen as well. Rest assured that Sharp is not the only company working on expanded gamut HDTVs. Manufacturers like Mitsubishi and Samsung are also working to perfect 48-bit RGBCMY screens as well.

I wonder what all this R&D in the television world means to computer displays and ultimately digital imaging. With the emergence of tablet computers like Apple's iPad, the entire concept of the desktop computer is being turned upside down. No matter how you slice it, we are on the verge of a technological revolution. Combine all these extra pixels with the emerging 3D TVs that are hitting the market, and we are in for a truly immersive viewing experience.

Now I ask you, do you REALLY need to see CBS's Big Brother 19 in high-gamut 48 bit 3-D color? Of course I would argue that I don't need to see pretentious, back stabbing, twenty-somethings living together in any color, in any dimension.

PMS 356C
48L* -58a* 28b*
92C 11M 98Y 15K
55R 136G 70B
8.57X 17.59Y 6.53Z
131°H 59%S 53%
Hex/HTML 3b8a49
Pittsburgh Paints: 4A-6 Ivy League
Spectral wavelength: 520 - 570 nanometers
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

On this St. Patrick's day, I thought I would pause to give props to the cool neural sensation we refer to as GREEN. This is "The Color Space", after all. Did you think I was going to discuss waffle makers here? No, for that you will have to see my blog called, "The Small Home Appliance Space".

As the list at the top of this post indicates, there are so many ways to convey the color green. It doesn't matter if you are a color scientist, color management geek, painter, photographer, school lunch lady, or St. Patrick's Day reveler, green has different meanings for everybody.



"The color green is everywhere in nature, satisfying our spirits and filling us with neutrality and peace. Green comes alive in clover fields, rolling hills, and the leaves of a tall aspen forest. Easy on the eyes and naturally calming, green symbolizes life, harmony and wealth. Soothing as green tea, or invigorating as fresh mint, green will create a restful environment and promote well-being in any home... "

No, I didn't write that last paragraph, thank you very much. It was written by some copywriter in the marketing department of the Pittsburgh Paint company. They want you to buy some green paint to put on your bathroom walls because it's better than that dull taupe color you have in there right now. What are you thinking? That Taupe doesn't even come close to matching the new soap dispenser and tooth brush caddy you bought at Bed, Bath and Beyond last month...

Green is the color of nature, trees and grass.
Green is the color of spring and new life.
Green is the color of Kermit the Frog who often crooned about the difficulty of being green.
Green is the color of money and greed.
Green is the color of envy and jealousy.
Green is the name of the room that Lady Ga Ga waits in before she comes out on Leno.
Green is the color of ecology and conservation.
Green is also the color of those canvas bags at the grocery store that the Prius drivers want me to use instead of paper or plastic. Who needs all that canvas in the landfills? That seems wasteful. I'm sticking with plastic.
Green is the color of youth.
Green is the color we say someone is if they are new to something.
Green is the color of the Libyan flag. That's it. Just green. Really.
Green is the color of the jacket that Tiger left in the hotel room.
Green Day is a good band.
Green Bay Packers are a good football team.
Green is one of the colors of Christmas.



As my friend Kermit the Frog sings, it's not easy being green. So next time you find yourself 89C 10M 98Y 10K with envy, pour a tall frosty glass of 59R 138G 73B beer or a nice cup of 3b8a49 tea, and relax in the naturally calming PMS 356C room. 

As a followup to my previous blog post about Photoshop turning 20 years old, I wanted to pass along a cool link on the subject...


Adobe has a website dedicated to the indispensable image editing tool hitting 20,000 miles on the software odometer. This site contains an interactive time line of major Photoshop milestones going back to 1990. There is also a very cool video featuring a discussion with the creators of Photoshop - Thomas Knoll, John Knoll, Steve Guttman, and Russell Brown - as they discuss the evolution of Photoshop. The video begins with some vintage footage where we see Russell Brown placing a photo of himself behind President Regan and the first lady on an old Macintosh. 

If you've used Photoshop as I have in the last 20 years, you may find this discussion of the brains behind the software interesting.

They grow up so fast, don't they?

Adobe Photoshop turns 20 years old this month. It seems like only yesterday that little 6 year-old Photoshop 4.0 discovered nondestructive image editing with Layers. Or when he was 8 years old and impressed you with his multiple undo History Palette. But at the same time you wanted to send him to bed without dinner for the horrible way he mismanaged color in 1998. We all watched as Photoshop went from the pimply pre-teen years of 6.0 to when he began developing facial hair with CS2's Bridge and Smart Objects. And now he's off in college... sniff...

                          

Ah, memories. I recall the first time I played with Photoshop. I was a young kid with a dream. Well, okay, I was a 20-something working on a Scitex Prisma workstation. Scitex was what all the cool imaging people were working on in 1990. Then along came this program called Photoshop 1.0 from Adobe. Some of my coworkers at Quad Graphics knew it as a funny program with the creepy bitmapped eyeball icon running on that little beige box called the Macintosh over in the corner. Back then it was not so much of a photo editor as it was a paint program with a few image correction and optimization capabilities.

By 1993 I was weened off the Scitex system, and had my own speedy Quadra 950 running Photoshop 2.0. Back then, Photoshop was no replacement for a high-end CEPS system. The Mac, running at a speedy 33MHz, was dreadfully slow (by today's standards), RAM was very limited and expensive, and the tools in Photoshop did not compare to a $200,000 workstation like the Scitex Prismax. What a difference 17 years makes.

Today, with Photoshop 11 (CS4), Adobe has created a something that has transcended proper grammar, as the noun "Photoshop" has morphed into a verb in many circles. The phrase "We can photoshop that out." is as popular as "Please hand me a kleenex." or, "Can you make me a xerox?".

Did the Knoll brothers ever imagine what would become of Barneyscan XP (Photoshop 0.87) back in 1988? I don't think it's making too much of a leap to say that Orville and Wilbur Wright are to air travel, what Thomas and John Knoll are to digital imaging. Okay, I'll give Russell Brown some props as well.

Photoshop evolved into the tool it is today because the digital imaging and desktop publishing markets around it flourished at the same time. First it was low-cost desktop scanners, then digital photography. This digital revolution helped define what Photoshop has become today.

It is impossible to imagine any image you see in a magazine, newspaper, catalog, billboard or a website that hasn't been touched by Photoshop. Sure, you can do a lot of color correction and image enhancement in RAW processors like Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom, but for full feature image editing, Photoshop what you need.

Over the years, there were many programs that came and went that were supposed to kill Photoshop, or at least compete with it. There was software like Live Picture (anyone remember FITS files?), and in 1995 Quark announced plans for Xposure, the Photoshop killer that never made it to market.

When I was in art school in 1984 (yikes!) I can recall my instructors trying to put aside our fears by saying the computer would only be another tool for an artist to use. They used to say things like, "You could take a computer programmer and ask them to create art on a computer and they couldn't do it. But train an artist how to use a computer, and it becomes another tool in their arsenal.".

            

Who could forget this little bit of photo retouching from 1994? Time Inc. turned OJ's mug shot into an illustration with a little help from Photoshop. See more of these famous manipulated photos here.


Over the last 20 years, Photoshop has become that indispensable, omnipresent tool for every artist. In the right hands, amazing, original works of art can be created. In journalist or marketing hands, it can even be used to slant the news or make the unreal seem real to support an accompanying story. See the OJ photos above. It can do something simple like subdue a red cast from your child's face. Or clone the barf stains off the carpet from the 20 year old Photoshop's all night kegger at the fraternity last night.

Here's to another 20 years. There is still so much for that Photoshop kid to learn...

The worst-kept secret in consumer electronics history was finally made public last week as Apple introduced us to the iPad. Yeah, it's a funny name, but the iPod sounded a bit strange back in 2001 too. Now that name is woven into the fabric of our technological lives.

And just like the iPod changed the way that many of us listen to music over the last decade, the iPad will change the way many of us read books, newspapers, magazines and maybe even catalogs in the decade to come.

As I covered in the blog I wrote last July called, Pulp Fiction: Is Print Dead? the e-reader concept is absolutely in our future. Amazon's Kindle was not really the first e-reader to the market. E-readers were introduced about ten years ago, but the timing wasn't right for a number of reasons. So they never took off. Speaking about the Apple iBooks application during his speech, Steve Jobs showed a photo of the Kindle and said, "Were going to stand on [Amazon's] shoulders and go a bit further here." 




I believe the introduction of the iPad is on scale with the introduction of color in magazines and catalogs. Back in the 60's and 70's, the body of most magazines were in black and white. Most newspapers did not use much color in their production. The desktop publishing and digital prepress revolution of the 1980's made color in publications as common as sequins and feathers on Lady GaGa. And the brilliant, colorful display of the iPad will make dull black and white readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader show up on eBay faster than you can say "16 shades of gray."

It is not a stretch to imagine that in the not-too-distant future, the heavy backpacks filled with textbooks that our kids tote around will become as odd-looking as a CRT monitor. Five of the worlds biggest book publishers are already online, and as Jobs put it, "We're going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishers in the world, starting this afternoon... We're very excited about this."

I'll tell you some that aren't very excited about this... Book printers. Book binders. Magazine printers. Barnes and Noble. Borders. Look at the music industry. Certainly there are many people that still purchase CDs and DVDs. But lots of record stores that were around in 1990, are no longer in business because so many people download their music from sites like iTunes. When was the last time you walked into a Musicland or Sam Goody's? Traditional paper back and hard-cover books, textbooks, and glossy magazines will have a market for some time to come. But each year more people feel right at home downloading electrons in front of a glowing screen instead of buying atoms at a brick and mortar store. Perhaps because they literally are right at home. 

Of course let's not forget that this device is not just for reading. It is a true multimedia player (albeit without support for Flash right now)... It's a web browser, a photo viewer, an email device, a video player, a gaming device, a music player, a calendar, an art canvas, and a lot of other things not yet realized. The iPhone has over 140,000 apps available to download. And it's only been about a year and a half since the SDK release. Expect lots of apps created specifically to take advantage of the iPad. 

But it's the iPad as an e-reader that is perhaps most important from the standpoint of changing cultural habits. When was the last time you touched a photo in a book and something amazing happened? Like a digital equivalent of a pop-up book. Or imagine this... You receive a digital catalog in your inbox, and as you flip through the glowing pages and touch a photo of a model wearing a jacket, a window opens and a video begins playing with the model wearing that jacket in some cool location. A voice-over describes the jacket's details as music plays in the background. It's a mini infomercial that came to life on the pages of a digital catalog. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing...


 

Years ago, in the early days of electronic pre press, we lived among spendy Scitex systems and huge drum scanners with 40,000 buttons, switches, dials, levers, foot pedals, pull cords and miles of rainbow-colored SCSI ribbons. We scanned in transparencies, and worked all the images in a CMYK color space (the four colors we print with - cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Although it was possible to scan into RGB (red, green, blue), almost everyone allowed the computer within the scanner to convert the image into CMYK.

Two important technological revolutions changed all that. The Internet and digital photography. The Internet introduced us to e-commerce. There was no longer a need to have all those images converted to CMYK if they were destined for a web site (RGB display) and ultimatley due to reside in a digital asset management system. And the explosion of digital cameras over the last 15 years has made the drum scanner all but obsolete. All of this means we have digital images that begin their journey as RGB (technically RAW RGB, but more on that in a future blog), not CMYK. RGB workflows are much more commonplace. But if an image is eventually going to be reproduced as ink on paper, at some point it must be converted to CMYK. Where, when and how that conversion happens is often the topic for discussion. 

And one place you can find a bunch of color geeks having that conversation is at the PIA Color Management Conference. The 11th annual conference just wrapped up last month in Phoenix. One of the sessions called "Obstacles to RGB Workflows" addressed the issue of RGB and CMYK workflows. Among the speakers on the panel was Tom Collins from Quad Graphics. He went over the pros and cons of an RGB workflow and what they were doing at Quad Graphics.

Collins began by outlining the reasons why RGB is the preferred workflow over CMYK:

• RGB allows for greatest repurposing
• RGB allows more latitude for color manipulation
• RGB allows easier and more consistent gray balance
• RGB gives you the ability to utilize L*a*b* for even greater control
• RGB allows for consistency of separations for press when converted
• Things like GCR and Total Ink are no longer issues at the color correction level

Then Collins outlined some Challenges with RGB workflows:

• Untagged RGB images
  • Forces the arbitrary assignment of an ICC profile
    
    • He referred to this as "shopping" for the right profile
• Issues with some vintage CMYK color technicians adapting
  • Many feel the need to 'move the black' - counters separation consistency
• Color corrections are different, retouching is the same
• Black-only drop shadows require work arounds
• Workflow consistency - Requires automation

Collins discussed his experience with RGB specifically at Quad Graphics

• Quad began full RGB workflows in 2001
• They were forced to create custom automation for workflow consistency - hands off color management
  • Color technicians focus on image manipulation and quality, not color settings, profiles, BPC, and rendering intent
• Quad customers demanded separation consistency, and had higher demands for color quality

Collins talked about the different RGB workflow strategies in regard to when the RGB file is converted to CMYK

• Early-binding
  • Files coming in are converted to CMYK early in the workflow - color correction and retouching is done in CMYK - CEPS model
• Mid-binding
  • Color correction and retouching is completed in RGB - files are converted to CMYK during an automated conversion before page assembly
• Late-binding
  • RGB files are placed in pages and converted to CMYK in the RIP - PDF/X-3 or PDF/X-4 

Collins said that the majority of the workflows at Quad Graphics are a mid-binding, with color corrections completed in RGB, and CMYK being placed in the pages with PDF/X-1a being used. "If there are any color alterations, we go back to the RGB file and reconvert." Collins added.

Collins said that we need to raise the awareness of the concept of color managed pages in a late binding workflow.

• Rips and color engines are improving - behaving more consistently
• They are realizing benefits
  •  More efficient than early or mid-binding  workflows
  •  Improved color reproduction
  •  Offers the ultimate quality and flexibility with repurposing
  •  

Collins said that there are some challenges to late-binding workflows

• There are transparency and overprint issues with PDF/X-4
• Inconsistencies among PDF versions and RIPs
• Most prep suppliers are still learning and may be reluctant

To sum up, Collins said that CMYK has served it's purpose (and in some cases still does), but early-binding workflows are very limiting.
"RGB (and L*a*b*) imaging provides the best quality, and is preferred to CMYK for the benefit of our customers and the end product." Collins stated.


  

Desert Training

While reading an on-line forum recently, I ran across an interesting quote that somebody had placed on the bottom of their post. It went something like this, "It is better to train people and risk they leave - than to do nothing and risk they stay."

In the spirit of that quote, I thought I'd devote a few words to one of the best investments in training that any company with a color critical workflow can make. Whatever corner of the industry you call home - printing, prepress or premedia services, photography, graphic design, color retouching, packaging, brand management... If it involves the need for accurate color reproduction then you should consider a presence at the upcoming PIA Color Management Conference.

To be held again at the beautiful Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort overlooking the sparkling desert city of Phoenix, The 11th annual PIA Color Management Conference runs from December 6th through the 8th, with a special pre conference program on Saturday the 5th. Each year the advisory board, working with the PIA (Printing Industries of America), assembles some of the top speakers in the industry that address all aspects of color reproduction and color management. Among the many excellent speakers scheduled to present this year are Steve Upton president of Chromix, Don Hutcheson from HutchColor LLC, Dave Hunter, president of Pilot Marketing, Steve Smiley from Vertis, Dr. Abhay Sharma from Ryerson University, and Kelly McCathran from Adobe Systems. 

The conference this year includes almost 60 sessions and hands-on labs. Among them...

Color Meets the Frontier of Electronic Paper
Dr. William Ray with NthDegree Technologies Worldwide, discusses how color management is applied in the developing field of Printed Illuminated Paper which lights up and creates the illusion of motion. He has created a unique color model for emissive color that draws on both RGB and CMYK.

How to Compete in the Global Marketplace with Monitor/Softproofing
This session covers how adopting soft proofing will help you save money on materials, labor, time and transit costs. This session will give examples of companies that made the switch from contract proofs to soft proofs and saved themselves and their customers money.

Real World RAW from Large Format to Digital SLRs
Steven Johnson, world renown photographer and last year’s excellent keynote presenter takes a look at where we are in color management and where the technology is going as it relates to the uninterrupted stream of data in RAW workflows. 

RGB Working Spaces
Don Hutcheson discusses the difference between RGB working spaces and how to choose the correct space for Web, publication, fine art photography, RAW export, image archives, etc. He will talk about the benefits to wide-gamut spaces, and if there is one perfect RGB space for all work.

The program this year also includes two great keynote sessions...

Delivering the Color for Broadway
Representatives from King Displays, a Manhattan printing company, will discuss how they produce 90 percent of all the signs and displays for the Broadway theater market. Everything they produce is color critical and they will show how they meet the needs of a distinct clientele with demanding color needs and quick turnaround times.

Forecasting the Right Colors
James Martin, the president of the Color Marketing Group, will discuss how his group of color designers comes together each year to collaborate and then interpret their shared information into salable colors that will ultimately make up the color directions for all industries, manufactured products, and services.

I can speak from experience that this valuable, one-of-a-kind conference is very much worth attending. Color management technology is still in a state of evolution. Whether you live in the world of print or the Internet, every year new products, best practices and procedures are developed that benefit everyone involved in the exchange of color. See the PIA Color Management website for more information.

Follow my tweets and updates from the conference December 5-8 on twitter @widenpremedia.

Mark
        

Will Apple's long-rumored tablet device be another nail in the coffin of print?

It appears that the latest rumors swirling around Apple's yet-to-be-announced hardware is that the device will be primarily positioned to move people away from traditional printed media and towards next-generation media. Instead of a device to watch a movie or play a game, it will be more of an e-reader. Essentially a Kindle on steroids with a beautiful touch screen and links to dynamic media in the form of videos, audio and websites that support the content of the publication.

In a recent post on AppleInsider, Gizmodo reported that Apple has been reaching out to publishers of newspapers, books and magazines in order to get their content on iTunes (If that's true, I suspect Apple will have to rename iTunes at some point. Maybe they already should with podcasts, iPhone apps, movies, etc. all currently available). If the Apple tablet takes off like most products from Apple do, it can only serve to confirm an eventual end to certain forms of printed media. As I pointed out in a blog post from last June called, Pulp Fiction: Is print dead? the day of a digital device delivering dynamic media to your palms is coming soon. Certainly one could argue that it is already here with devices like the iPhone. But many people find the display too small to do any serious reading, That is where the tablet will come in.

With that said, I'm thinking about my previous post on Print 09. Attendance was down. In order to boost attendance and breathe some new life into a graying trade show, The Graphic Arts Show Company (the group that produces the show every four years along with Graph Expo), needs to rebrand the Print show. Certainly many of the exhibitors have already embraced new media with technology like Web to Print and other emerging sectors such as thin film printed electronics and RFID. It can still maintain a print focus, but needs to expand into other areas of electronic publishing in order to remain relevant in the years to come. Or at least as long as trade shows in general are still relevant.

Back to Apple... They reportedly plan a January 2010 announcement of their tablet device with an availability sometime in June or July. Indeed they recently hired back Michael Tchao, one of the developers of their initial touchscreen tablet - the Newton. He figures to help develop the marketing strategy for the new device.

In the mean time, I will continue to bask in the smell of the CMYK inks on the paper pages of my Wired magazine.

From Way Up On Top of the Carpet Padding...

Just like the opportunity for voters to find new users of the official White House stemware, the mammoth Print 09 trade show blows into the windy city every four years. Chicago's cavernous McCormick Place was once again the site for the six day event that showcases press, converting and finishing equipment manufacturers along with premedia and prepress service providers.

From most of the exhibitors that I talked to, attendance during the event started off slow on Friday, but picked up as the show progressed. Many did think that overall the attendance was down substantially from Print 05. However, when I was there on Monday (day 4), it was at times difficult to talk with some of the vendors, as many booths I visited were packed with attendees. I suspect the same would not have been true on Saturday or Sunday given the beautiful weather in Chicago.

Whether it is Graph Expo or Print, I think the square footage of the floor space that some companies occupy is in direct proportion to the amount of padding that is placed under the carpeting in their booth. Take a few of the larger exhibitors like Heidelberg, Xerox, or HP for example. I actually had to use a rope ladder to climb onto their floor space. Once I was up there, I had to crouch my 6' 4" frame at times to keep my head from coming in contact with the structural support joists for the McCormick Place roof. And then it was like walking on a Tempurpedic mattress. 24 feet of memory foam under foot takes its toll eventually. I heard several people were taken to the hospital for falling off of the carpeting.
 
Okay, on a more semi-serious note, here is some random thoughts from just a few of the 650+ exhibitors that occupied the more than 460,000 square feet of floor space...

                  

A lot of the buzz I heard was based not on what was there, but what was NOT there. Namely any equipment from Kodak. In a bold move, they instead chose to fill their booth with a bunch of interactive information kiosks. They also had a large set, called the K-Zone, where they conducted interviews of various industry leaders in a talk show format. It was exactly like "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien", except a lot less funny. I thought the Kodak booth was well designed and it seemed to be pretty crowded every time I walked through it. Some people where a bit put off that they did not show any equipment. I give them credit for at least trying something different. At the very least, they generated a lot of buzz throughout the show.

                           Kodak also had a pretty cool handout at the show...Their magazine called "One" had a 5 mil clear polyester outer cover printed on a Gallus EM 510 S press. What was unique about it was that it showed an image on the outside printed (from the inside) with 20 micron stochastic screening and another image printed with a 200 line screen on the inside. It was essentially four color process, two hits of white, and another four color process on top of that. A nice flexo project showcasing their Flexcel NX Digital Flexographic System.

FineEye Color Solutions (formerly known as Chromaticity) introduced the ICE (intelligent color engine) technology in the form of the ICEserver. The ICEserver is a Mac based application that processes PDF files before imaging on a CTP, inkjet or color controller RIP. It takes a different approach for converting files from RGB to CMYK. It recalculates color conversions with new algorithms, accounting for paper color values. Programmed Color Reformulation (PCR) is built into the ICEserver which functions in a way like GCR - replacing some CMY with black. They claim ICE yields a 20% increase in gamut with existing CMYK inks; 25% average reduction in ink use; increase in dynamic range and contrast; faster makereadies and it equals gray balance and tonality of GRACoL and SWOP. The before/after color samples they displayed in their booth were impressive. They intend to have another ICE product out early next year - ICEmaker which will be a Photoshop plug in using the same technology for color separation. Hmmm, that makes me think... maybe Widen should OEM their ICE technology and incorporate it into our digital asset management software. We'll call it ICEdam. And we'll call our Widen Appliance server ICEcube. And then there will be ICEberg to sink large ocean liners carrying Leonardo DiCaprio, and... Okay, I'll stop now.

What was the deal with the AT&T coverage in the McCormick Place exhibit halls? Can't a guy get a decent Internet connection on his iPhone so he can tweet? And don't get me started on the $12 burger in the Plate Room food court that tasted like a sweaty shin guard.

                   Just Normlicht, the German manufacturer of light booths and desktop viewers was showing off their new LED Color Viewing Light. The desktop viewer uses new LED technology to replicate almost any standardized light source. The new LED technology also offers the ability to simulate any light source with or without the UV spectrum allowing for easy viewing of the effects of optical brightening agents found in many commercially available substrates. The consistent color in these booths can be maintained for 25,000 hours - 10 times as long as a standard booth containing fluorescent tubes. They had these new LED products on display along with their line of Just colorCommunicator booths which are equipped with a USB interface for calibrating the intensity of the standardized lighting along with the monitor. For more information on the pricey new Just LED booths, see my previous blog post called, Let there be LED.

GMG introduced the ColorServer Plus - A new color management solution specifically designed to allow companies to consistently print to an industry standard (GRACoL) on a digital press to achieve color accuracy. At Print 09, GMG announced the use of GMG ColorServer Plus driving an HP Indigo press. ColorServer Plus uses GMG’s iterative profiling approach to establish a precise calibration state of the digital printer as well as conformance to a specific industry or in-house print standard.

I think I'll skip the $12 burger at Graph Expo 2010.

Looking back 20 years

While I usually like to keep my eyes gazing to the future, this industry changes so fast that it is sometimes fun to look back and see where the printing, publishing and prepress world has been.

When it comes to trade journals and magazines I can be a bit of a pack rat. A couple weeks ago while going through some things in my office, I ran across a Graphic Arts Monthly issue from September, 1989. Remember 1989? The Berlin wall came down. A gallon of gas was 97 cents, A postage stamp cost 25 cents. Batman and Twins were featured on the big screen, while MacGyver and The Cosby show glowed on the small tube. Homer Simpson got his own show. And Microsoft introduced the Office suite of software.

So as I look toward the upcoming Print 09 show in Chicago, I thought I would look back 20 years and share a few things I found in that issue of Graphic Arts Monthly that previewed the Graph Expo 1989 show.

                                 
The September 1989 cover of Graphic Arts Monthly featured a cool 3-D image of downtown Chicago. A pair of 3-D glasses was included inside. In 1989 the large building in the foreground was known as the Sears Tower, not the "Whatchoo-talkin'-bout-Willis" tower as it is known today.


The Outlook section where GAM looked at current and future economic trends affecting the industry claimed in 1989 that "Consumer income and Savings are rising and consumer debt is on the decline. Printing and publishing enjoys continued growth, outpacing growth in the overall economy. Newspaper output continues to grow (2.1% growth), as measured by the industrial production index." Wow, how times have changed.

As further evidence of a bygone era, I offer the 10 page article on color drum scanners that begins, "In today's graphic arts industry, the color scanner is widely seen as a symbol of scientific up-to-dateness."  The story went on to say "...there are around 2,400 color drum scanners in North America, with 150 more to be installed by years end." I wonder how many of those scanners are still around today? The article pointed out that the DS 757 scanner sold for as much as $384,500 (!!). How did we ever see a ROI on that? Of course, in 1989 there were very few digital cameras in use - everything was film or reflective art. Everybody came to printers and prep houses with their film because desktop publishing was still in its infancy. CEPS systems from companies like Scitex and Hell ruled the land and Adobe Photoshop 1.0 would not ship until February of 1990.
                   
CEPS (color electronic prepress systems) were the way imaging and pre press production was done in 1989. This Kodak Designmaster 8000 system was featured in a GAM ad.


And speaking of desktop publishing, an article titled, "Design Software Comes of Age" pointed out that "Despite substantial improvements in computer hardware and accompanying strides in software, only about 10% of the design community has made the computer an integral part of its business." Looking ahead, the author wrote, "In the future, high computing power will be used to provide features now found only on half million dollar machines." The story outlined 1989 technical limitations to desktop publishing by adding, "To get an idea of just how much memory storage is required, consider that a single 3.5" x 5" full color, high resolution image alone can consume four to six megabytes (Oh my!). It is only comparatively recently that even 40 MB disk drives have been commonly available on microcomputers." Yikes! 20 years later, I have almost 16,000 times that capacity on my computer, and over 800 times that on my iPhone alone.

                 
Raise your hand if you remember the Kodak Signature color proofing system. This system was one of the first proofing systems that delivered a proof imaged on the actual press stock. But it was a giant, multi-step process that never caught on (thankfully). The GAM ad that the image above ran in also hinted at the upcoming Kodak Approval system stating, "... and in the near future, true halftone direct digital color proofing products." were on the way. The Kodak Approval DDCP system would become a digital proofing standard for more than a decade.


Another article on New York City separation house Kwik International Color also pointed out how expensive workstations were the norm back then.... "A visitor cannot help but be impressed by Kwik's high-technology environment. The company has two complete Hell Chromacom Systems, supported by a room-filling twenty drive units each providing 300 megabytes of image data storage."

While many things have changed in the industry over the last 20 years, the specific art of putting little dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink on paper remains essentially the same. It is an analog, good-old-fashioned chemical reaction. Speed and quality have increased, presses are more automated, and the entire route the content takes from creation to the printed page has changed incredibly. Then there is this whole internet thing. In 1989, we were still about five years away from typing "www" on our keyboards for the first time.

Any guesses on where we will be in 2029?

Follow my tweets from the Print 09 show on Monday, September 14 @widenpremedia. 

Last year, the IPA introduced a new educational program aimed at certifying individuals responsible for color management and color reproduction. The IPA Color Management Professional certification program begins with an extensive course on Color Management Fundamentals. This acts as a prerequisite to three additional courses focusing on different areas of expertise: Color Managment for Photography, Color Management for Prepress and Color Management for Premedia.

These courses were developed by noted industry color experts including Dave Hunter from The Pilot Marketing Group, Lou Prestia of Prestia Color Consulting and Steve Upton with Chromix, among others.

Each course contains a series of online videos totaling 2 - 3 hours in length. After completing the videos, students take an online exam based on the information presented in the videos. The initial CMP-Fundamentals exam consists of eighty questions selected from a randomly mixed question “pool” so no two exams are alike. Students must answer 80% of the questions correctly to pass the test and become certified.

Individuals that have a good base knowledge of color management can opt for the exam-only option of the Color Management Fundamentals course. I recently took this 80 question exam and I can tell you that it was a challenge (and YES I passed, thank you). The questions spanned across all aspects of color management, and often were situational. Some questions made me scratch my head and really think it through. See a complete list of individuals that have achieved IPA CMP certification here.

                                     
If you are responsible for color reproduction in any way - from photography, design, prepress production, premedia services or any similar areas, I highly recommend pursuing color management certification. It serves as not only as a great learning experience, but also to reaffirm your knowledge level. This is the first time that the industry has had such a comprehensive program in place. I applaud the IPA and the professionals that put this course together.

If you would like to learn more about the IPA Color Management Certification program, check out their website: http://www.ipa.org/knowledge/cmp

In my previous blog, You can have my last roll of Kodachrome, Paul Simon., I discussed the recent announcement by Kodak to stop manufacturing Kodachrome film. That made me think about a promotional video I saw a couple years ago. Kodak was the sponsor of a keynote address at the 2007 PIA Color Management Conference in Phoenix. At the beginning of the presentation, the representative from Kodak played the video to get the message out that the old Kodak has left the building and they are now poised to play a major role in the future of digital photography... If you believe that... I don't. Kodak came late to the digital photography party, instead putting too much stock in their lucrative film business.

Anyway, the video received a great response from the audience. See it for yourself below - it's actually pretty funny.

The recent  announcement that Kodak will no longer manufacture the once-popular Kodachrome film has a lot of film purists hanging their heads. Not that everyone didn't see this coming. Digital cameras have outsold film cameras beginning in 1994. Today, you will have to look real hard to find any film cameras on the shelves of most stores. They may be slightly easier to find at camera stores that cater to professionals such as B&H or Calumet, but try to find a film camera at Best Buy or Target. They are over there, next to the bulky tube TVs and VCRs. History will show that the first decade of this millennium was when digital went from just a cool technology to the accepted standard in image capture. Although digital photography has been in use commercially for over 20 years, the last ten years have seen incredible advances, both in terms of function and quality. Photo journalists were first to adopt, followed by studios, and then consumers. There will always be those that believe film is superior to digital. And for certain situations like fine art, it may be true. It's the same reason some people prefer the natural sound of vinyl records over CDs or MP3s. Truth be told, there is a certain look of film like Kodachrome that can be difficult to duplicate with digital photography. Although with the right post processing in Photoshop you can come close. To me, Film vs. digital is like learning how to do long division with a pencil on paper (film) instead of simply using a calculator (digital). You can arrive at the same number with both methods, but one requires a lot more work. 

As for me, I love digital photography and am not looking back, even for a second. The concept of immediately seeing how your shot turned out has alone made the transition to digital worth it. Then there is the fact that you can shoot a seemingly unlimited number of shots, trying different exposures, techniques, poses, etc. without having to worry about how much film you have left. And let's not forget that if you provide color retouching or premedia services, you have eliminated a number of color reproduction variables from your process. With digital photography there is no film processing and scanning. Two steps that can drastically alter the color before it even makes it on to your computer display. I know, because I used to scan plenty of Kodachrome transparencies with all their vibrant hues back in the day of the drum scanner.

Okay, so the points I just made in the film vs. digital debate have all been made many times before. And now that Paul Simon's mama took his Kodachrome  away, (as made famous in his song of the same name, where he sings, "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away..."), it got me thinking as to other recording artists and the doomed technology they didn't want to do without... 

• In 1984, Phil Collins sang, "Daddy, you better not take my top-loading Sony Betamax VCR away..."
• In 1980, Ted Nugent sang, "I'll take my bow and arrow to anyone that touches my yellow Panasonic 8 Track tape player..."
• In 1995, Pearl Jam sang, "I'll sit here at this Scitex Prisma workstation 'till the day I die."
• In 2000, Harry Connick, Jr. jazzed up his fans by crooning, "I'm a dot matrix man, and I always will be..."
• In 1991, Enya sang, "Sail away, sail away, sail away with my Sony Walkman...."
• In 1927, Louis Armstrong blasted away at his trumpet while singing, "Hey boys, don't you take my wax cylinder phonograph player off that shelf...!"
• In  the 1998, song, "Dial Me Up that Crazy Internet", Weird Al Yankovic sang, "You'll get my 28K baud modem when you pry it from my cold, dead hand."
• In 2008, Snow Patrol sang, "Crack the shutters so I can gaze out at my beautiful Kodak Approval XP4 dye sublimation direct digital color proofer..."
• In 2009, U2's Bono lamented, "Baby, you and my Toshiba HD DVD will never leave my side. You're both magnificent..."

          

So you see, many recording artists aren't so cutting edge after all. You can still have my Kodachrome, Paul Simon... And tell Art Garfunkel he can have my Ektachrome too.

Yesterday I posted a blog about the importance of reducing clutter and maintaining a neutral surrounding color when evaluating color proofs. I linked to a website sporting some great optical illusions that nicely illustrated how surrounding colors influenced human color perception.

Staying on that same theme, today I want to add one more cool optical illusion that involves a little color theory and a phenomenon called persistence of vision and after image. After image is the ghost image that seems to float in front of your eyes often after looking at something very bright like a light bulb or Stephen Hawking. Persistence of vision relies on this afterimage to persist on the retina for around 1/25 of a second. Persistence of vision is what puts the motion in some flashing neon signs and marquee signs with chasing lights. Time Square or the Las Vegas Strip is one giant persistence of vision experience. This is also what gives the illusion of motion in a film created from a series of still frames This moving picture phenomenon can be blamed for giving us such cinematic masterpieces like "From Justin to Kelly", "Kazaam", "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!", "Howard the Duck", and any movie staring Pauly Shore.

Okay, so here is the illusion. Stare at the small black cross on the center of the image below. You will see that one magenta dot will disappear from each position around the circle very quickly. As this cycles around, it will appear as a green dot is now moving around the circle. That is the afterimage of the magenta dot - green is the opposite color of magenta. As you keep your eyes fixed on the black cross a little longer, you will actually see the green dot erase all of the magenta dots, so all you see is a chasing green dot. It's kind of like when Pac Man eats all the dots as he races around the screen. Here, when the green afterimage is combined with the magenta dot, a gray dot is produced which is the exact same color of the background.

                
Keep your eyes very still as you stare at the black cross. First you will see a chasing green dot appear (the opposite color from magenta on the color wheel). Then in about 15 to 20 seconds, the "green" dot will erase the magenta dots. Cool, huh?


         
The Youtube video above shows a great application of the persistence of vision phenomenon. One can only imagine the different mobile marketing opportunities that this product might have in places like Las Vegas, New York, or any other place people are gathered after dark.

Pink is not the new black. Black is the new black. I love good black and white photography. And a nice neutral gray goes with just about anything.

But I also love to put rich color on walls. I love the warm, golden amber-red colors of sunsets, and cool, crisp deep hues of lush green forests. I like teal. Teal is like a blue that wanted to be green, but it stopped halfway there. Probably because it heard Kermit the Frog sing, "It's not easy being green." .

Color is personal. It's an important thing to surround yourself with the colors that make you feel good. Except when looking at color. And by color, I mean color proofs, prints, samples, swatches, etc...

If you have a job that requires you to make critical color judgments, such as comparing proofs to a product sample, press sheet or color swatches, or simply choosing a color from a swatchbook, then you should have a dedicated area without other colors to distract your eye. The surfaces of that area can be made up of any color you want, as long as it's neutral gray. 

Last year, I posted a blog on the importance of viewing conditions, specifically pertaining to the color temperature of the light used to view color (see Color Communication 101 from July 9, 2008). The surrounding environment you view color in is just as important as the color of the light used to view color.

The international standard ISO 3664:1974, Viewing Conditions - Prints, transparencies and substrates for graphic arts technology and photography, specifies characteristics of how color should be viewed. Among the points this standard makes is:

• Bright colors on furniture or clothing should be avoided as they will cause a color cast
• All surfaces surrounding the viewing area should be neutral gray in color with a reflectance of 60% or less (Munsell N8)

You can add that the viewing area should be clear of clutter. Any other colors in your field of view will impact how you view color.

       
Where do you view color? Okay, okay, I'll come clean. I did open up a big-old can of artistic license to the image you see here on the left. I added a few items to the light booth for illustration purposes. But I have been places that do not look too far from that. The more colors you see around the color that counts, the larger your room for error is. Color reproduction is difficult enough without all the other colors influencing your decisions. Do yourself a favor and cut the clutter.


There is a great website that is filled with amazing optical illusions. It has some great interactive exercises that really prove the point that surrounding color plays an important role in your color perception. Specifically check out the illusions called Color Perception and Color Perception2. There is also some other fun illusions that you may have seen before.

 
It seems impossible that the blue squares on top of the cube to the left are the same color as the yellow squares on the cube to the right. But closer inspection reveals that the squares from both images are in fact gray - equal values of red, green, and blue.


       
Another common illusion that seems hard to believe... Square A and square B are actually the same value of gray. They are identical, but our brain tells us this can't be true because of the placement of the squares and the surrounding colors. This illustration also proves that you should never evaluate color next to a giant green cylinder. Check out these and other interactive optical illusions.


When viewing color and making critical color decisions, it is important for the success of your project to keep the viewing area neutral and clear. And only wear gray clothes that comply with ISO 3644:1974 - Munsell N8... Okay, you don't have to necessarily be that meticulous . But keep in mind if you are looking at color proofs while wearing a shirt with bright red sleeves, it can influence your color perception. And while you're at it,  take off those rose-colored glasses.