Review: Gretag improves spectro handling, and books by two experts explain the intricacies of color management to lay people and experts alike.Gretag has let me play with a full production sample of their new enhanced "Rev B" EyeOne spectrophotometer, which comes with the new plastic ruler, backing plate and case.
This measurement device should be shipping as of now in all the EyeOne and Profile Maker Pro bundles. Here are my hands-on impressions:
The new Rev B spectro head is itself rated as twice the speed of the old one, in samples per second. Moreover, the new ruler design also provides a huge speedup and usability improvement of the measurement process. I took about three minutes with the handheld unit to measure a one-page chart.
Working with the unit feels about four times faster, at least, than my painful usage of the old unit. What is more, measuring is now a relaxed, pleasant experience, as the greater patch-reading speed means that the patch-recognition algorithm makes no mistakes. Re-readings are not necessary.
I think the plastics redesign is a great success. The ease of use and increased speed means regular profiling with the handheld unit becomes feasible; of course, intensive users may choose to mount the spectro on the $2000 IO robot arm, which will soon be released with free upgrades of both EyeOne and Profile Maker Pro software.
Why is black-and-white printing so difficult? Click here to read more.
EyeOne is a precise system that has been well accepted by the marketplace, but it's wonderful to see it become more user-friendly. Competition from Xrite is keeping Gretag honest.
The new plastics come in a big foam-padded shoulder bag which stores the folded backing plate and has cut-outs for all those little pieces which make up an eyeone kit. This bag is huge, but I guess there is no risk of damaging the pricey spectro.
The spectro itself is physically and functionally interchangeable with the previous model and works with the same software. It looks and acts the same, it's just faster.
The new measuring ruler has a sled for the spectro. When the spectro is mounted here, it glides over the paper without touching just like Xrite's Pulse. The easy free movement of the spectro should help ensure reliable measurements. Also, ink won't be scraped off the paper anymore so charts can be reliably remeasured at will.
The test chart to be read is clamped in place by a clip at the end of the backing board. The spectro head now moves easily over the locked-in paper. You could use one finger to move the unit, but in practice you still have to depress the somewhat awkward side button while acquiring patch data. Hey, I'm happy already. Who needs perfection?
Oh, and did I say that the new plastics and case also fit the old unit? They're a total bargain at $100 and every existing user should purchase them, and watch his spectro glide effortlessly over the paper. There is also an upgrade offer to a complete new spectro, which owners of an aging unit might welcome.
Color Management for Photographers
I just received Andrew Rodney's new book, Color Management for Photographers, and Abhay Sharma's Understanding Color Management. Both books are excellent, but very different.
Andrew Rodney's text shines as a how-to book. It is a simpler and more complete tutorial text than Real World Color Management. It'll teach you what a color-managed workflow is, why you want one and how to get the job done with the main tools on the market.
There's even a set of work-through exercises, and a very useful CD with a lot of demo software, sample images and other useful goodies.
The geeky chapter that photographers will love is "Printing to a Press," which discusses CMYK separation and such arcana as UCR and GCR.
Abhay Sharma's textbook explains all the color-geek stuff in terms simple enough to understand. This is where you'll find a clear definition of all that quaint terminology, like "tristimulus," or "chromaticity," and the background on colorspace conversion formulae.
Dr. Sharma also provides information on how profiling software is architectured, and the actual contents of an ICC profile file, again in terms simple enough to understand.
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