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Article: A First Look at ColorThink 4
At CHROMiX we make great effort to put timely, useful information into our newsletters. In particular, we try to provide articles that supply useful information about the industry as a whole, and are not just a means for shameless self-promotion. This newsletter article will be a rare exception, but I think CHROMiX fans will be well served nonetheless. ColorThink has been such a staple in the color industry for so long, and so many of our customers have some form of ColorThink already, that an article introducing a brand-new (and long-awaited) version of this app would be exciting and welcome! (We like to think.) Even so, this article will only scratch the proverbial surface of the new features of the software, so look for more feature lists and perhaps more articles to come in the future. Color Assets
Color Assets is a brand-new feature that is going to be invaluable for every color manager. Link folders where you store profiles and other assets and it presents you with a searchable database that helps you quickly discern useful info about your files.
Imagine being able to instantly find any file in your system that relates to color: any profile, any measurement or reference file, any image that is used for color analysis. It's a search engine, it's an error detection system, it's a file organizer, it's a file analysis system. But that's not all! Oh no, my friends! ColorThink harvests and calculates metadata about each file in the database. For any profile, measurement, image, etc, it will show the primary colors, asset type, color space, various size parameters, when the file was created, even the max density value, and more. Then you can sort by these values to find the largest gamut profile, or the paper with the highest Dmax, or any other metric listed. This tool alone would be worth doing an entire newsletter article on it. For now, here are a few of the more important features: Additional Locations
You can have Color Assets point to any folders of your own profiles, images, or measurement folders, and ColorThink will catalog all of their metadata in the background process. Common Industry Apps
Color Assets will track important application storage areas on the same machine for several of the popular color management software companies in use today, as well as storage locations for Curve4 and Curve+ software. Local Devices
When ColorThink senses an available color instrument, it also appears in the list of assets sources on the left side. The user can click on the icon to start measuring, or use this feature to aid in troubleshooting connections. Automatic profile checking
The capabilities of ColorThink's Profile Medic are built into the profile evaluation process, so any profiles with any warnings or errors are automatically marked in the display with an icon. Using the search field, you can search for all the profiles in your system that have errors or warnings. While beta testing, Color Assets has become the first place I go when I want to find a profile or any color management file. The value of this one tool cannot be overstated. Just try to state it overly! See? You can't. Measuring
Yes! ColorThink 4 now supports your favorite measuring instrument. This has been a popular feature in Curve4, Curve+ and our Maxwell software. Now in-app measuring comes to ColorThink.
Worksheet
After measuring, the resulting measurements are shown in the Worksheet. There it can be saved out, manipulated through any of the transforms or operations of the Worksheet, or it can be opened in the Grapher. Grapher
If a measurement is initiated in the Grapher, the resulting measurement will be loaded into the Grapher. From there you can open it into the Worksheet or use any of the other analysis features of the Grapher. GrapherThe 3D Grapher in ColorThink has been its most popular tool for many years. All the features that you like have been retained and we have added many of your feature requests. Grapher Images
When an image is brought into the Grapher, ColorThink4 initially displays the image on a plane at one end of the 3D plane. An animation feature will show the movement of the pixels from their location in the image to their respective Lab locations in the 3D gamut. This is much easier to demonstrate than it is to explain! If there is an embedded profile in the image, ColorThink4 will recognize that and it becomes easy to see how all the pixels in the image are mapped to locations within the embedded profile. Measurement data
The Grapher recognizes embedded measurement data inside of profiles. This makes it super easy to verify that the profile matches the boundaries of the measurements that were used to make it, an excellent way to verify the validity of the measurements and the profile calculation. New coordinate spaces
It has long been understood that (http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Lab_is_warped) Lab space is not quite uniform in showing distances between colors. This "warping" of Lab space is one of the reasons we have gotten so used to the unusual shapes of some profiles. ColorThink 4 includes some alternate color spaces that are intended to work as a more uniform representation of color space. "Jab" (from CIECAM) and "OKLab" are two color spaces included. We are open to adding others if they become useful in the industry. Take a look at AdobeRGB in "Jab" space and all of a sudden this popular working space is more circular around the gamut - rather than having the long extended blue tail we have come to expect with Lab space.
LCH
Another effective coordinate space which unfolds profiles and other data sets is LCH. Color hue, which normally goes around the color wheel like hands of a clock - is instead stretched out into a straight line with LCH view. With this different perspective, the relative saturation or chroma of each of the colors is now easily compared because they're viewed across a straight line. Alternate color spaces like Jab and OKLab can also be used in this mode so you can see how they affect the saturation to become a lot more regular. Orthographic view
Typical 3D viewing in ColorThink has always used what artists would call "perspective" - where the viewing angle is skewed so that the portion of a gamut that is closer to the viewer appears larger than the portion that is farther away. This enhances the three dimensional feeling of the graph, and probably feels "normal" to you now. Having perspective in a 3D graph causes problems when more analytical viewing is desired. ColorThink 4 now has an orthographic graphing option where the perspective is entirely removed. This creates graphs where any comparison from front to back or top to bottom is unchanged by the relative distance of any of the elements in the graph. It can look a little strange to the eye when you first try ortho viewing, but we've had users ask for this capability and we're happy to make it available in ColorThink 4. Saving Views
ColorThink has always had the ability to rotate the view and zoom in on different features. But this can be cumbersome at times. ColorThink 4 allows any rotation, shift, or zoom level to be saved as a "View." The views can be renamed to anything you want and are available in a list. Instantly call up your favorite views using the number pad on your keyboard. Delta E Blobs
Have you ever had difficulty explaining the concept of delta E? ColorThink 4 can illustrate the idea of Delta E as blobs or spheres around colors. The Delta E 76 distance calculation results in a symmetrical sphere around each central color point. Delta E 2000, however, has a significantly different shape. The blobs shown in the illustration are 4 Delta E away from the central color but, using Delta E 2000, they are elongated ovals, not perfect spheres as with dE76. Now you can actually see what the dE calculations look like in true 3D space. Rendered Gamut
Color gamuts normally shown in ColorThink are the maximum gamut the device can produce as told to us by the profile. This is independent of how the profile itself might produce color if we printed to the device it represents. In addition to the device gamut, ColorThink 4 can now show the rendered gamut with the touch of a button. In this illustration, the wire frame is the maximum gamut the device can produce, but the solid surface is the maximum rendered gamut this profile will produce if the source color is sRGB. The available gamut that can be printed is highly dependent on the source color working space, the rendering intent used, what black generation is used, and what ink limiting is present in the profile. Those of you who print need to be able to see how these choices affect what colors your workflow is actually allowing to you produce. Gamut Comparison
When you want a more analytical way of comparing two gamuts, ColorThink 4 can contrast and compare, using subtraction and addition, to create an entirely new kind of graph. When sRGB and a press profile are compared, ColorThink 4 subtracts the portion of the press profile that is left outside of sRGB. This is a very clear illustration of the colors on press that are unavailable if sRGB is your working space. The compare function can switch it around so the press profile is subtracted from the sRGB gamut. You can also select the shared gamut to be shown, as well as the gamut of both profiles combined. The Plot Item inspector shows the gamut volumes of each of the two original gamuts as well as the comparison volume. You get actual gamut volume numbers rather than having to eyeball it. The gamut comparison index, or GCI, is also calculated in accordance to the ISO standard showing, in this case, that the press profile is about 49% overlapping with sRGB, and that sRGB is about 202% of the size of the press profile. Slicer
When graphing overlapping gamuts, there are a few other techniques that help you to see within one gamut to see how it interacts with another. The slicer tool is one such technique. In ColorThink4, the slicer can now slice vertically, and you can change the angle at which it slices. You can also rotate the gamuts through the slicer to gain a new insight into your color. The horizontal slicer from ColorThink3 is also still available. White point editor
There are a number of specific-purpose tools in ColorThink to help you evaluate and make changes to profiles. One new tool in ColorThink4 is the White Point Editor. Modifying the white point in an ICC profile is a handy way to alter the appearance of proofs as well as other functions. The new White Point Editor is very flexible, where you can enter XYZ, Lab, color temperature values or enter the white point by taking a measurement. You can also drag and drop a list of colors or another ICC profile into the editor, and the white point will be used. Much of this article has been adapted from a video showing the new features of ColorThink4. Watch Steve Upton describe the features of his new baby here. There is much more info in the video than we had time for in this newsletter article. And there is much more to ColorThink 4 than is covered in either! Contact us to find out more. Thanks for reading,
Pat Herold
CHROMiX Tech Support
View this article in the ColorWiki with larger images.
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