Basic Color

Glad you liked the article Eliot, thanks. I haven’t compared products recently, so I don’t know the answer to your question. I’ve been using various versions of basICColor for quite a few years once I discovered that it performed more accurately than a couple of others I had used back then so I just stayed with it. This version does stand out for its ease of use, adaptability and accuracy. It’s not very expensive, so as far as I’m concerned more accuracy is both affordable and better insurance against printing errors than less accuracy. And it offers a lot of features for the price.

Mark, I have a Eizo ColorEdge CG319X, which is self calibrating. Do you see significant advantages in using this software in addition to the Eizo software?

Jim

Elliot Puritz wrote:

Mark:

I went to the basICColor web site. Perhaps I missed the information: What is the final cost if one wants to buy after trying? I gather one must supply credit card information to actually try the program and such information is then used to purchase. If I am correct in my supposition I find such rather interesting in that the company now has credit card information on one who has perhaps decided NOT to buy the product! So, can one try and purchase from a dealer in the USA or Canada? At one time Free Style in LA sold the program. As I recall, the installation and use of the preceding iterations were somewhat challenging and thus Free Style actually had links to those who, for added cost, would help users both install and use the software.

Hi Eliot. Please revert to Annex 1 of my article: the whole procedure for buying, installing and licensing the software is laid out there. The current price the last time I checked it (several weeks back) is 69 EURO for the complete application. You can use Paypal to buy it directly from basICColor, and you don’t pay for the trial period.

I’m glad you raised this. I mentioned the price in “Concluding Remarks” under Figure 29, but now that I go back to their website I see the German page mentions the price and the English one does not . I should revert to them and get this clarified.

Jim Kasson wrote:

Jim Kasson wrote:

My general take would be that if you are satisfied that your printed output is a good rendition of what you expected based on what you saw on your display…

It’s good enough. My expectations are not high, though. After 30 years of working with soft proofing, I don’t think that, for critical work, soft proofing can replace hard proofing. The viewing conditions for monitors and prints are sufficiently different that, except for laboratory conditions, the viewer adaptation (using the word in its most general sense) will be materially different. That doesn’t mean that calibration is unnecessary for effective proofing, just that it’s not sufficient.

Jim

Hi Jim, As no doubt you know, both calibration and profiling are important for a proper colour management set-up. I agree with you it’s tricky to work between transmitted and reflected light. The one cannot be a completely faithful replica of the other, but if the display were properly calibrated and profiled, the printer well-profiled and in particular the profiles well-specified for simulating the softproof, the softproofing should provide a reasonably good predictable forward view of colour appearance in the print; perfect, no, but good enough for most intents and purposes, I would say yes. Fraser, Murphy and Bunting cover this rather nicely in Real World Color Management Second Edition, page 291. They do recommend the benefits of softproofing, while at the same time acknowledging it is not a perfect substitute for a hardproof. The whole question is whether it’s good enough for one’s purposes, and that’s judgmental.

Jim, as I say, “The Proof Is In The Print”. once you have the print you can see so much more on what you want to do next.  But, good calibration and profiles will make that step more an adjustment of the image content than the quality of the image.