Investigating quality aspects of current color management tools

Color Management (CM) tools claim to give both accurate and consistent results. However, using CM tools of distinct manufacturers, different results are likely to occur even if the same parameters are given. Obviously themanufacturers do not focus on the same criteria doing their optimizations, which leads to the fact that each CM tool has its own strengths and weaknesses. In this study, new methods for comparing CM tools were evaluated, and with these methods, ICC profiles 1 generated by five CM tools of current leaders on the market were investigated in order to point out their weaknesses and strengths. In addition, the influence of using various CM modules (CMM) was tested. For the generation of each ICC profile, the same measurements (Iris Inkjet, ISO 12642 / ANSI IT8.7/3 target) were used. Since the standardized ISO 12642 file format, in which the measurement data are stored, was not accepted by each of the tools, the file had to be converted to proprietary formats. The investigated quality aspects were accuracy, consistency and smoothness, with ΔE a b 2 and ΔE 9 4 3 taken as the criteria. For each aspect, performance was visualized by mapping the AE values to pseudo colors, giving a very intuitive view on the investigated subject. Results showed that CM tools indeed achieved color fidelity, especially those generating large profiles.