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COLOR MANAGEMENT WITH X-RITE PULSE COLOR ELITE SYSTEM PART FOUR: GAMUTWORKS AND TOOLS This review and screenshots are best viewed at a screen resolution of 1280x1024 or larger. Smaller screen resolutions will result in the necessity for panning.
The Xrite program suite PULSE Color Elite contains besides the already described calibration and profiling routines two additional programs which are very interesting for serious photographers. The first one is called "Gammutworks" and the second one is "Tools". I want to briefly look into these programs to see what they can do for a photographer Xrite GAMUTWORKS
A photographer is well aware of the meaning of "gamut" but what are Gamutworks? Well, let us start with the already well known first screen - you see, the forth option on the bottom is Profile tools
You can press Profile Tools and come to the next screen which allows you to either rebuild a profile or to edit a profile or to start Gamutworks
We launch Gammutworks now - a new screen opens up and the fun starts. You can upload a previously saved color profile (left upper box) and look at it in detail and compare it visually with other ones. What I have done here is the following - I have uploaded three profiles of my Epson 875 printer - the first one was done with the Gretag Macbeth Eye-One system on Feb 11 (as you can see from the file name), the second one is the one done with the Pulse system for glossy paper and the third one is with Pulse for matte paper.
Now to explain what you see here - the SW allows you to visualize the gamut range in "3D" - the box on the left - you can zoom in and out, rotate in all directions and scan through the color profile with a horizontal plane - that is what you see on the right side in the box. As you can see, the color profiles for glossy paper are almost identical - what else - and the one for matte paper is much smaller in range, which is very logical. Theoretically, both programs, Gretag and Xrite should result in the same identical color profile for the same paper, but I need to admit, that I have maybe not done both of them with 100% accuracy which could be the reason for this small deviation in homogeneity and consistency. You can also select many additional options for displaying the 3D visualization of the gamut range - wire frame, one color, all colors etc. The option "Info Viewer" tells you the metadata for the file and the "Image Inspector" is another nice option. Instead of uploading a color profile, you can upload an image and look at its gamut range and color distribution.
That is an image, which I have uploaded. It mainly consists of greens and whites. Just to mention - the image must be a TIF file, the program does not accept any other formats.
Here you can see the Info Viewer and what it can display - file size, image size, color space, creation date etc.
And here you can see the gamut range and distribution of colors in space - as expected, basically only whites and greens. What I think is that if you need to compare images, this option can be of real interest - all digital images have a certain fingerprint and if the images are altered, they change that fingerprint - you can imagine what I mean - you can detect minute changes in the color space and distribution of color inside the 3D space. I would advise you to look deeper into this program option, it can do a lot for you if you are interested in comparing colors and distribution of colors within a digital file as well as color profiles. The other program, I would like to look at is called "Tools"
Xrite TOOLS Tools is a sub-program that allows to edit, manipulate and repair or modify color profiles. The starting screen is as usual the same - you now have to choose Tools and you are entering that part of the program
Editing a profile means to change the color rendition, to change the way, how colors are scanned, printed, etc. In this case, I have chosen a sample file which comes with the program to explain what this program does. Here you see two windows - the left one displays the original file with the current color profile applied and the right windows shows the changes to the image after applying the changes (in preview - so you can see what you have done without risking damage to your original profile)
What I want to show is not a real editing process but some options how and what you can change - here it shows you RGB curves changed - left the original and right the changes applied to the same image. This side-be-side comparison is a very good way to see what has changed and how modifications influence the output.
And in the following, I have called up the changes for lightness and saturation from the menu
One of the many options is to zoom into a part of that image to see the details better - especially of interest for the evaluation of the influence of changes to critical parts of an image like skin tones
To sum it up - a very attractive add-on to this program suite. Not absolutely necessary to work in photography but a very nice to have one. I like it and find it useful for many applications. As example if you need to reproduce a certain color in an image as closely as possible and the overall color profile does not give you that very same precise color, you could trim your profile manually and at the same time check how these changes have altered the other colors in the image. Nice, right? That all is certainly not all these programs can do and provide for photographers. I would suggest you to take a look at them and decide for yourself which of these features you need, you like to have and which ones are of less importance for your work.
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