Gamut map: The colour tool for cross-media design

Due to our involvement with freeColour e.V., at the last meeting in Switzerland the desire for a cross-media tool for designers was expressed with which one can create intersections of colourspaces from the freieFarbe CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL.

With Gamutmap, Proof GmbH has now created such a tool, which is available to all designers free of charge. With Gamutmap nearly 100 individual colour spaces can be indicated from 34.250 colours of the entire CIELAB colour space, or intersections from many combined colour spaces can be indicated.

An example: As a designer you are looking for colours for a new corporate design, which are available in sRGB for the internet, in ISOCoatedV2 for printing image brochures and in PSOUncoatedV3 for printing stationery. For video productions, the Rec.709 colour space is also to be taken into account.

In Gamutmap you can now easily select the colour spaces sRGB, ISOCoatedV2, PSOUncoatedV3 and Rec.709 and then click on “show”. After a few seconds you will only see the colours that are available in all selected colour spaces. If you move the mouse over a colour field, you will directly see the absolute colorimetric values of the colour in all selected colour spaces and you can copy them directly to your clipboard.

Since the hex value of the sRGB colour space was also still interesting, this colour space was additionally marked for display. The HLC and Lab values of all colours can be read directly in the colour table. All other colour values can be copied to the clipboard simply by moving the mouse to the desired colour field. For the colour field shown in the example above, it looks like this:

HLC: H005 | L055 | C035
Lab: 55 | 34,867 | 3,05
sRGB: 188 | 106 | 128
sRGB (HEX): #BC6A80
Rec. ITU-R BT.709-5: 188 | 87 | 115
ISO Coated V2 (ECI): 14 | 64 | 27 | 11
PSO Uncoated V3 (Fogra52): 10 | 70 | 34 | 8

Gamutmap is “Work in Progress”

We are sure that gamutmap will be a great help to many designers in creating cross-media corporate designs and are very happy that we were able to start and push the project with the members of freieFarbe e.V. For us, gamutmap is “work in progress”, which means: In the coming weeks we will add further functionalities and features to gamutmap. For example, a German version is in progress, and the download of spectral D50 CxF data of the selected colours should be possible in the future directly while hovering over the respective colour field, if the field is in the gamut of the freefarbe CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL. Further function extensions are already on our wish list… 🙂

We welcome suggestions, criticism, wishes and any support for the expansion and addition of Gamutmap.

DIN SPEC 16699 “Open colour communication” published

DIN SPEC 16699 - Open colour communication - Final meeting - Berlin

A few days ago, our DIN SPEC 16699 “Open Colour Communication” was published and is now available for free download from DIN’s Beuth-Verlag.

Matthias Betz from Proof GmbH, Holger Everding from DTP Studio Oldenburg, Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin and Eric. A Soder from Pixsource in Switzerland, all members of the association freieFarbe e.V., have shown in the bilingual DIN specification a way to create high-precision color samples on the basis of open source, license-free standards and have shown ways for cross-media color communication.

The 44-page PDF is bilingual in German and English and can be ordered directly from Beuth Verlag, which distributes the DIN standards in Germany, and downloaded free of charge after a short registration.

DIN SPEC 16699 Open Colour Communication

DIN SPEC 16699 “Open colour communication” shortly before publication

DIN SPEC 16699 Open Colour Communication

 

DIN SPEC 16699 Open Color Communication Final Meeting Berlin. From left to right: Eric A. Soder, Jan-Peter Homann, Matthias Betz, Holger Everding

 

Last Monday, the authors Jan-Peter Homann, Holger Everding, Eric A. Soder and Matthias Betz took another milestone in the direction of free color communication in a final meeting at the German Institute for Standardization – DIN in Berlin: The last open points of DIN SPEC 16699 “Open Colour Communication” were discussed and approved. Now only the English version by Matthias Betz and Eric A. Soder and the final implementation and approval by DIN are missing. It is expected that DIN SPEC will be available for download in August. It is published free of charge as PAS – Publicly Available Specification by DIN in German and English.

In this DIN-SPEC we describe a procedure for precise color communication and color sample creation on the basis of open standards such as CIELAB, HLC, ICC and CXF file formats. We work with mathematical color models, high-precision color samples and exact spectral data as a basis for ink formulation at color manufacturers and service providers. Instead of mutually incompatible commercial standards, we show an open, and open-source approach to high-precision color communication.

Besides the DIN SPEC we are working at full speed on new projects and ideas and on different new versions of our free colour CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas.

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