Introduction to ICC colour management

William Li
Kodak

The International Color Consortium (ICC) was established for the purpose of creating, promoting and encouraging the standardization of an open, vendor-neutral, cross-platform color management system architecture and components. The outcome was the development of the ICC profile specification.

Bio:
William is currently Color Technology Manager with Eastman Kodak. He brings a diverse background in engineering, physics, and systems design and leads the team responsible for developing core color technology in such products as Kodak ColorFlow Software, Kodak Proofing System, Prosper, and Matchprint Virtual.

Andreas Kraushaar
Fogra

Substrates such as textiles, ceramics and plastics have a higher level of sub-surface scattering (often visible as a halo round the measurement spot) in comparison to most paper-like substrates. The resulting colour measurements are not visually plausible and do not produce an acceptable visual match on conventional contract proofs or on a monitor display. In this paper a method will be presented how the established measurement conditions (in ISO 13655) need to be changed to allow for a visually plausible measurement.

Bio:
Andreas Kraushaar is head of the prepress division at Fogra, Munich, Germany. Within the prepress department he is responsible for research in the fields of imaging science focusing on colour management and image quality assessment. He is convener of Working Group 3 (process control and related metrology) of ISO TC 130 (Graphic Technology).

Peter Kleinheider
calibrate workflow consulting
Prepress Digital

eciCMYK (FOGRA53) was released in August 2017, aimed at developing tools for a media neutral print workflow. However, we have not seen any adoption of this ICC profile. Only few experts have an idea of how to use it and even among them, the way to use it is in debate. Neither the Ghent Working group nor the Swiss PDF/X-ready association recommend the usage of this profile at the moment. When working with nChannel output devices in a PDF workflow but receiving PDF files designed for CMYK output, the path to process and apply color management to such files is full of pitfalls that can lead to dull colors. In case of "artful" use of transparency effects, suboptimal application of color management can lead to a change in visual appearance. We at PPD tried to overcome some issues in PDF Workflows when rendering to a CMYK+ color space by using eciCMYK as internal working color space.

Bio:
Peter Kleinheider is managing partner of calibrate workflow consulting and a central contact for publishing companies - from basic consulting to project definition and support to implementation according to defined requirements. For the company PrePress Digital he is responsible for PDF processing, color management, rendering and API interfaces. He joined the industry in 1991 and is one of the Austrian pioneers of desktop publishing, being one of the first to deal with automation, color management and PDF workflows. He is an internationally recognized expert who holds specialist lectures throughout Europe and works in the following institutions: technical working group of the PDF/X-ready initiative, the Ghent Workgroup Specification Committee, and ECI

Dietmar Fuchs
Colorlogic

Dietmar Fuchs will answer the question why color management for ink jet printers can be complex and how an advanced and complete color management workflow addresses those requirements, including spot color conversion. This will be illustrated based on a sample workflow from the Durst software.

Bio:
Dietmar Fuchs, born in 1968, holds a Bachelor degree in photo engineering from the University of Applied Science in Cologne, Germany. The infinitive field of color management has been his passion for more than 20 years. He works for ColorLogic GmbH as a Product and Project Manager, where he is responsible for the color management and color server products.

Max Derhak
Onyx Graphics

Digital textile printing offers new opportunities as well as challenges for managing color. Various aspects and issues of textile color production and management are presented. Both Manual and Automated Color Managed approaches in relationship to color production workflow software are covered. The use of iccMAX color management is considered. And lastly, color profiling tips relative to textile color management are presented.

Bio

Max Derhak has worked for Onyx Graphics Inc. since 1990 where he currently functions in the role of Principal Scientist. Max has a Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Utah, a Masters in Imaging Science at The Rochester Institute of Technology, and a PhD. in Color Science from RIT. Max admits to having a passion for both color and color technology. He was an initial contributor to the open source SampleICC and ICCXml projects which he continues to maintain. Max serves as a Co-Chair of the ICC as well as the Chair of the ICC Architecture Working Group, and has been a primary driving force in making iccMAX a reality. Max is also the initial contributor and maintainer of the iccMAX reference implementation - RefIccMAX.

Marco Roos
Color-Concepts

Color matching, color profiling and building workflows for textile printing companies are challenging, to say the least. Challenges vary from: improper workflows, poor output quality, incorrect profiling settings, OBA related issues, lack of ICC based color management knowledge, color matching requirements and much more. Marco will share the experiences, the weirdness of some situations, the psychology of introducing ICC as a method to manage color, the need for appearance simulation and measurements and the limitations of ICC based color management workflows.

Bio

Marco started his career 25 years ago in the inkjet printing industry. First in sales, later in product management and since 16 year as the owner and founder of Color Concepts, world's largest independent testing and color profiling lab for the wide-format inkjet printing industry. Color Concepts developed ColorBase™, a cloud-based profile management and distribution platform, hosting more than 700,000 profiles, serving more than 80,000 print companies worldwide.

Arnaud Fabre  
Caldera

Functional and Decorative markets consume a tremendous amount and a wide variety of non-paper materials on a daily basis. In addition, the constraints of size, speed and quality fluctuate according to the applications and the targeted customers. From the floor to the ceiling and through the walls, the most commonly encountered problems will be listed first. In a second step, good practices and a good understanding of the ICC capabilities will be presented. Finally, the implementation of an appropriate use of a RIP software within the ICC framework will be addressed.

Bio:
After completing its academic PhD in 2007 in computer science imaging, Arnaud Fabre joined the Caldera team to embrace industrial challenges. Starting as a Software Engineer while giving lessons at the Strasbourg University and writing articles in specialised magazines, Arnaud became naturally Product Manager mixing technical background and openness to the market.

Dorin Pitigoi  

From more conventional sign and display applications on backlit film, textile or PVC based with two-side backlit printing to more demanding niche stained glass decorative three-ink layer one-side printing applications, the challenge of printing the expected is appraised through colour vividness and richness, strong contrast and dynamic range, while preserving the appearance of the resulted reproduction corresponding to their intended viewing state - day/night with backlight off/on.

Bio:
Dorin Pitigoi is active in the graphic technology industry for over 25 years providing training, support and expert opinion on issues related to colour management, printing processes control and related metrology, quality control, assurance and standardization. He is an active participant in various working groups and standards.

Steven Harnie
LMNS Expert group

Through evolving technologies, the digital printing market is continuously growing and does so very rapidly. Concurrently, substrates such as fabrics, ceramics, carpets and many other non-flats have been widely accepted by the industry. The printers used with these applications and the constellation of machines around them appear to live up acceptably to the expectations, but it is less straightforward to keep the production processes stable, correct for fluctuations and keep color reproduction within the tight tolerances that are imposed. A requisite switch of substrates, inks or printers can drive any print company into a real predicament. In these situations, it becomes clear that colour management and adequate software is crucial.

Bio:
Steven Harnie is an application specialist who helps digital printing companies, manufacturers and software developers by providing intelligence and solutions through application knowledge. Before starting as freelancer in 2012, Steven spent 15 years as a service engineer and worked at an overseas printing company as production manager. Currently he is managing director at Printrix, he is an associate expert at LMNS and a member of the ESMA expert team.

Massimo Ontani
Devstudio

This presentation will explain the innovative approach to optimize and calibrate those printing systems provided of White inks on 'non-white' surfaces, developed Devstudio and ColorStream. The profiles are called Hybrid because the color of the substrate is involved with the colorants to the definition of the gamut of the printer in relative colorimetry. The special workflow also allows to create profiles for different substrate colors by simply reading a single multichannel target on an initial color and then adapting it to the new color surface.

Bio:
Massimo Ontani is a digital imaging expert with more than 25 years of experience in the world of image & color reproduction. He is deeply focused on color management and he develops software solutions for printer linearization and characterization at any level. Since 2005 he deals with the development of all the applications in the field of color management of DEVStudio Since 2005 he deals with the development of all the applications in the field of color management of RIPhouse DEVStudio.

Panel discussion

Challenges in n-colour printing

William Li
Kodak

Jurgen Seitz
GMG

Profiling for of the many different production devices, substrates and ink sets needs smart processes and tools. Ink-limiting, linearization, characterization; handling a wide variation of color information and organize this data in a consistent and reliable way. How to handle different paper tints? Creating profiles for an absolute match or make it a product in a consistent appearance to a reference for reproduction of images and spotcolors. This talk points out some important steps that must be respected for a smart and dynamic colormanagement as we need it today.

Bio:
Grown into Color Management coming from the traditional prepress industry, Juergen joined GMG in its very early years. At GMG he accompanied its development from a proofing to a colormanagement company, and designed and developed GMGs key customers' colormanagement setups. As senior technical advisor he participates in the development of new color profiling strategies but also supports the GMG Services and Consulting team.

Markus Barbieri
Barbieri Electronic

In this talk we show the importance of the optical measuring aperture size and/or multiply measurements on the same patch and the advantage of automated measurements, and we explain the impact of the opacity and the translucency of the media on the measurements. For backlit applications we show how to obtain the best results making media-relative transmission readings. Finally, we show how Computer vision can help you to measure spatially distorted textile charts.

Bio:
Markus Barbieri is co-owner of Barbieri Electronic, an internationally operating manufacturer and supplier of intelligent color measurement systems that ensure the highest image quality for professional digital printing. As Chief Technical Officer (CTO) responsible for Research and Development, he develops specialized and unique color measurement solutions for large format, wide format, flatbed, textile and industrial printing.

Ray Cheydleur  
X-Rite

James Vogh  
X-Rite

This talk will look at the usage of the M3 measurement condition in colour management. The talk will introduce the M0,M1,M2, & M3 measurement conditions and then look at the M3 condition. Reasons for using the M3 condition will be discussed. The impact of using the M3 condition on color management when used in combination with profiles that were not made with M3 measurement condition will be examined.

Bio:
James Vogh received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tulsa in 1990 and a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University in 1998. During his Ph.D. he developed a neural network architecture for recognizing 3D objects. At Monaco Systems he developed ICC based calibration technologies, and as a principle color scientist at X-Rite he continues to develop calibration technology.

Andrea DeRossi  
Tecnologie Grafiche

The best practice for a good color calibration of industrial digital printers that print on non-paper substrates: glass, leather, laminates, ceramics and fabric, etc. Each material based on its specific structure, requires particular attention and preliminary choices both in the measurement phase of the linearization targets, and in the construction of specific customized targets for the process characterization. The correct and appropriate setting of the printing modes, as well as the measurement and optimization of the characterization data are the basis for correct color management by means of conversion and color data processing systems using ICC profiles and Device Link profiles.

Bio:
Andrea has 50 years of activity in the field of conventional and digital printing. He is a Partner and President of the Tecnologie Grafiche srl Company with which he represents the Barbieri, ColorLogic and Techkon brands exclusively for Italy. A former technology and laboratory teacher at the Scuola Grafica San Zeno in Verona, he continues to provide training courses and technical advice. He is a member of Fogra since 1991 and UGRA-UCE since 2008.

Michele Conni
Barbieri Electronic

Describing texture can be achieved by measuring multiple properties of the sample and by calculating various features based on the measurement. This presentation, focusing in particular on the application of 3D features, aims to identify feature extraction techniques most suited to the characterization of fabrics and to describe different ways to measure them.

Bio:
Michele Conni graduated in engineering physics at the Polytechnic University of Milan in 2015, with specialization in optics and photonics. He is currently studying for a PhD in computer science at NTNU, in collaboration with Barbieri Electronic, where he works in the research and development group.

Tanzima Habib
NTNU

Spectral data plays an increasingly important role in colour reproduction today, especially in colour-critical areas like brand identity. Ideally we have spectral reflectance data to begin with, but in many cases we don't - for example, if we are working with data in CIELAB or XYZ. In this case we need to find the spectral reflectance from three-component data. This is obviously an under-determined problem, but using the right methods we can obtain a surprisingly good estimate as long as we have a suitable training data set. In this talk some methods and results are shown.

Bio:
Tanzima Habib is a final year master's student at NTNU, currently working as a colour science intern at HP Printing and Computing Solutions, SLU, Barcelona. In her current role she is a part of the writing systems group and is researching into predicting ICC profiles for various printmodes using machine learning. She has a diverse background in software engineering and geoinformatics, and her interest lies primarily in the domain of colour management and image processing.

Jan Seguda
ColorGATE

Conventional measuring techniques as well as measuring instruments and the classical color management approach often lead to unsatisfactory results and problems in ceramics. In this presentation, a different approach will be introduced that focuses more on characterizing the design than the printer and overcomes the problems of traditional measuring instruments in ceramics. This leads not only to more flexibility through easy line and printer changes for producing a design, but also to significantly reduced costs through faster line entries in the course of reproductions.

Bio:
After studying and training in media design and practical computer science, Jan Seguda first worked as a communications designer before moving over to industry/digital printing and to a tile manufacturer. He gained a lot of experience through numerous digital printing and color management assignments around the globe, as well as the most diverse requirements for a suitable workflow. Since November 2017, Jan Seguda is working as Product Manager Industrial Printing for ColorGATE.