Colour Management as a Precondition of Quality

<p>Colour management technology has reached a high level of maturity. Only ten years after it first appeared on the market, ICC colour profiles have become indispensable in modern premedia. It can be said without exaggeration that colour management has revolutionised digital proof printing. A whole range of newcomers in the print industry supplier community offer an intelligent combination of a PostScript RIP with integral colour management functions. The quality of these low-priced proofing systems has now reached such a high level that even discerning customers accept such digital proofs as contract proofs. Modular proofing solutions are regularly to be found among the leaders in the digital proofer tests.</p><p>Working with colour profiles and profiled workflows is still a major problem area. It is no mere chance that notably digital proofing is the field in which users work with colour profiles in virtually all systems, since applications here are locally limited.</p><p>An important step for the widespread use of colour management technology is the now very extensive implementation of ICC mechanisms in application programs such as Adobe Photoshop. Version 7 is regarded as a model of well thought-out ICC-based colour management implementation. As Microsoft has neglected the ICC standard in recent years, Adobe has created its own colour management interface, called ACE. Based on the ICC standard, it is regarded by many experts as a reference implementation. Adobe products, which are so important for the graphic arts industry, now contain a standard colour management platform across all supported operating systems. Incompatibilities at system level can now be virtually ruled out, at least across the Adobe product line, including the important interfaces with PostScript and PDF.</p><p>Modern prepress technology is set to move ever further away from exclusive print production for standardised offset print. Multiple use of production data is still at an early stage. Numerous large and small production jobs are being run at customer request from media- or process-neutral data files. Colour management is a key technology, and its importance is set to increase further.