Details:
Summary:
The concepts and technology for an open color management system such as that specified by the International Color Consortium (ICC) have been around for a number of years. The adoption of this workflow by the graphic arts industry has been slow. A major contribution to the lack of popularity is that the quality and standards part of the ICC workflow is unregulated and the average user is unable to independently assess the quality of profiles and profile making software. This paper describes a process to evaluate the quality of ICC profiles and suggests that a simple, meaningful merit figure be established. A quality metric can be useful for two reasons. Firstly, it can provide feedback on how well a device has been characterized and therefore how good the device is likely to be in a color managed workflow. Secondly, a universally defined merit figure will allow the comparison of results across manufacturers. If vendor A is very good at making scanner profiles and vendor B is good with printer profiles, then the user can make informed choices appropriate for their workflow. If we are able to establish some standards for profiling, this will help to raise the quality of profiling software, assist user choice and lead to a greater acceptance of ICC color management in the graphic arts and prepress industry. This research describes the issues that affect input profile generation and shows why input profiles may contain colorimetric inaccuracies. A Delta E merit figure for the quality of input profiles is described. Seven commercial profiling packages are used to make input profiles and the quality of the profiles is tested. It was observed in this research that four vendors construct input profiles with a Delta E of about 1. Other aspects of input profiles are also considered such as profile tags. The quality of monitor profiles is also investigated. A procedure for evaluating the quality of monitor profiles is described and eight monitor profiles are made and evaluated. The results show that for monitor profiles many manufacturers produce equivalent, good results. All tests were done on the Macintosh platform. The authors intend to continuously update this survey and re-issue the findings when new versions of manufacturer's software are released. In this review, results for input profiles and monitor profiles are evaluated. Future revisions will widen the survey to include digital cameras, LCD panels and printer profiles. In order to keep track of the findings it is suggested that this review be referred to as WMU ICC Profiling Review 1.0.