Proofing.de

Gamut map: The colour tool for cross-media design

May 8, 2020March 12, 2020 by Matthias Betz

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 …

Proof GmbH is a partner of FreieFarbe e. V.

May 8, 2020September 25, 2017 by Matthias Betz

freeColor e. V. is a consortium of German and Swiss color experts who work to produce consistent color in all areas of application. Sounds reasonable? Exactly. That is the issue that is of central importance to our proofing customers. Therefore we are currently working in a project with the colleagues of FreieFarbe e. V. and are now also as Proof GmbH member and partner of FreieFarbe e. V. FreeColor relies on open standards such as LAB and HLC, which have long been integrated in computer software and want to show: …

Anaglyph glasses - transmitted spectrum of the two foils

Reproduction of anaglyph images and line drawings

May 8, 2020September 30, 2014 by Matthias Betz

Already a few weeks ago we received an unusual request: The musician and aspiring art student Tobias Weh from Osnabrück experimented with line drawings based on anaglyphs and achieved very good results on the monitor. He created superimposed line drawings, which then delivered a different image when viewed through the left eye than when viewed through the right eye. The question was whether this could be reproduced better with the high color range of a proofing system than with a simple domestic inkjet printer.

Since such questions are of course very interesting at first sight, we were quickly prepared to support Mr Weh in his work. To get closer to the matter, we use an i1 Pro 2 and BabelColor Color Translator & Analyzer to measure the spectra for the two films, which are transmitted through standard anaglyph glasses.

Actually a very satisfactory result. By choosing two colours as printing in the spectral ranges of 450 to 500 nanometres for blue and 650 to 700 nanometres for red, it should actually be possible to achieve quite a good result.

Layout in RGB, print in CMYK. Problems?

April 8, 2024January 19, 2013 by Matthias Betz

Especially in larger companies today the layout in RGB is the rule rather than the exception. The advantages are obvious:

The layout takes place in a large, almost media-neutral color space
All Photoshop filters are available without restrictions
The process of color space conversion to CMYK is shifted to the production process as late as possible

In practice, however, there are two potential problems in particular.

Problem 1: CMYK conversion in the last step.
The catalogue is designed in InDesign, all data is perfectly matched, the last step before printing and proofing is the export to a printable PDF in CMYK. Usually this is done via a preset in InDesign, which defines the exact specifications for the color space conversion. In practice, however, this color space transfer can hardly be monitored. The problem: Even if you check the color values in Acrobat in the exported PDF file, for example, Acrobat does not really display the colors it contains. Acrobat brav would show you CMYK values even if the RGB images are still wrongly contained. However, other CMYK values can occur during printing when the data is processed again. Lately it looked like this: