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Inside Macintosh: Advanced Color Imaging on the Mac OS /

Chapter 3 - Introduction to the ColorSync Manager / About the ColorSync Manager

What Users Can Do With ColorSync-Supportive Applications

Your ColorSync-supportive application or device driver can provide users with many features to help them reproduce color consistently across devices and across time and therefore reduce iterative color-proofing and color output surprises.

This section provides an overview of some of the features you can provide. How to implement these features is described in "Developing ColorSync-Supportive Applications" (page 4-3) and "Developing ColorSync-Supportive Device Drivers" (page 6-3).

Display Matching

When the user of a ColorSync-supportive application opens a file in which one or more ColorSync profiles have been embedded, the user benefits from display matching, that is, the user experiences consistent color from one display to another. If a color cannot be reproduced on the destination device, the ColorSync Manager can map the color to the color gamut of the device.

Your application or driver should allow the user to embed or tag color-matching information and be able to display a tagged picture using the ColorSync Manager. Most importantly, your application must preserve picture comments in documents and allow the information to be passed on to the destination device.

Gamut Checking

Because not all colors can be rendered on all devices, you may want your application to warn users when a color they choose is out of gamut for the currently selected destination device. For example, you can use gamut checking to see if a given color is reproducible on a particular printer. If the color is not directly reproducible--that is, if it is out of gamut--you could alert the user to that fact. The ColorSync Manager provides the CWCheckPixMap and CWCheckColors functions for checking a color against a device's profile to see if it is in or out of gamut for the device. Your application should then display the results of this check in a window for the user.

Soft Proofing

Using the destination device's profile, your application can enable users to preview what a color image would look like on that device. This simulation of a device's output can save the user considerable time and cost.

Device-Linked Profiles

Most users use the same device configuration for scanning, viewing, and printing over a period of time. Your application can allow users to create a device-linked profile. A device-linked profile is a means of storing in a single profile a series of linked profiles that correspond to a specific configuration in the order in which the devices in that configuration are normally used. A device-linked profile represents a one-way link or connection between devices. A device-linked profile cannot be embedded into images.

Calibration

Your application can provide calibration services. A calibration application offers the option of calibrating a peripheral device based on a standard state or calibrating the device based on its current state.

If a peripheral device, such as a color printer, has drifted from its original state over time, a calibration application can make use of the characterization data contained in the corresponding profile to bring the color response back into range.

A user may want to improve the reproduction quality of a device without returning the device to a standard state. Your application can create a profile based on the current state of the device, then use the profile to calibrate that device. This approach to calibration maintains the existing dynamic density range while improving the device's overall quality.