The colour management movement in India needs to accelerate

Over the past few years IppStar has tried to focus the Indian print industry's attention on colour management and standardisation. As some of you recall we together with Satish Nayak and Gretag-Macbeth (which later became part of X-Rite) did the colour management certificate course in Delhi and Chennai for which the main faculty was Paul Lindstrom of Digital Dots.

Then in July 2009 we conducted the Monsoon Summits in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai to discuss ISO 12647 colour process standardisation. Other organisations such as Kiran Priyagi's GATE and the Heidelberg Print Media Academy have also been doing work in this area. However, as of now I only of four organisations in India that have actually achieved 12647 certification. Of these two are in prepress including Color Dot and Hemanshu Desai's organisation in Mumbai. The other two that I know of are in packaging -- Janus in Baddi and Sai Packaging in Bengaluru. I do know of one more ogranisation which is trying but met ran into some temporary technical challenges.

One achievement of sorts is that the Indians are finally at least taking part in the TC130 meetings. First a few of us got involved with the Brueau of Indian Standards because that is essential if we want to attend international meetings such as the TC130. Although I confess that I have missed all of the recent BIS meetings but the most persistent of all us has been Venkat who is now with HT-Burda. He has at considerable cost taken part in the BIS meetings and has also attended several of the TC130 meeting abroad.

Thus one could say the movement for colour standardisation is slow, sporadic and still dependent on extreme efforts by a few individuals. Our group including IppStar is planning to help RIT to do a survey soon on the colour standardisation issue. So, friends, let's see if we can get this going.

Book Review - Understanding Color Management

Title: Understanding Color Management

Author: Dr. Abhay Sharma

Publisher: Thomson Delmar Learning

As the name says “Understanding Color Management”, a topic that has become the need of the hour in today’s printing world. The book starts from the point of view of a beginner in color and color management.

Abhay explains the basics of colour science and colour management, and provides an in-depth look, starting from basic attributes of colour and how the human eye perceives it. Good examples such as the “Airline analogy” (Pg-10) have been used to make the reader understand how CMS works. The book is filled with pictorial representations for nearly all topics which makes it easier to understand colour. Details about the range of measuring instruments and profiling software are also available to the reader.

International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles are discussed in detail and methods for profiling scanners, digital cameras, monitors, inkjet printers, and printing presses are thoroughly explained. After reading this book you will actually feel that colour management is not rocket science. Making this book an ultimate guide to understand color management. We also used this book as the textbook for our Certificate Course on Colour Management conducted in Delhi and Chennai in 2006 by Paul Lindstrom.

About the Author - Dr. Abhay Sharma is currently the chair, school of Graphic Communication Management, Ryerson University and a member of the International Color Consortium.