Color calibration app for a global leader in color management

X-Rite is the global leader in end-to-end color management solutions, measurement, and control across a variety of industries with more than 20 offices around the world.

Challenge

X-Rite produces instruments which are used in color measurement. These instruments are used for various purposes, from checking the color on the printer to measuring the color of the car before the repainting and coating.

They are working on display calibration for some of the major computer producer companies. The display calibration is particularly important for people who are working as designers, illustrators, artists, or gamers. It is crucial for them that the color displayed on the monitor is as close as possible to the color in real life.

X-Rite needed developers who could work on their FDC (Factory Display Calibration) project. This project is helping X-Rite's clients who are producing laptops to have fully calibrated display screens that will make sure that the colors are displayed in accordance with appropriate color standard.

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Solution

Our developers had the technology knowledge but little to no experience in color measurement and display calibration when they first started working on this project. Color management is a technology related to the correct interpretation of color and is extremely difficult to master. That is why our developers often like to say that color science is harder than rocket science.

The human eye sees colors in a very specific and subjective way, and that is why it was important to determine an empiric framework for finding the average human eye. They would do this through the RGB (red, green, blue) color system, which enables them to make a whole color specter out of basic colors. RGB uses white as a combination of all primary colors and black as the absence of light. While doing the display calibration, developers are using X-Rites instruments, spectrophotometers, which are the tools used to measure color information.

The way colors are displayed on the monitor can be determined by multiple factors, such as room temperature, air circulation, the amount of time that the computer has been working, etc.

The software solution implemented by our developers creates color profiles. Color profiles are files with the information needed for display calibration. The operating system reads the data from the profile and applies it to the graphics card. The goal of color calibration is to adjust displayed image on the screen according to chosen standard. That results in having colors on two different monitors displayed identically.

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Project Process

FDC (Factory Display Calibration) project

Six of our developers are working on the FDC project with developers from X-Rite. Display calibration is being done using the profiles created by the software solution our developers coded. The software solution utilizes X-Rite’s library with color science calculus.

Color calibration needs to be done on every display separately, since color science calculus is so precise it considers even the smallest differences in image displaying introduced by differences in behavior of different monitors, even of the same model, as well as various monitor environment factors.

Since it is hard and demanding to do the color calibration manually, FDC software solution automatizes the process and enables easy color calibration on every produced laptop.

X-Rite Color Assistant

The X-Rite Color Assistant (XCA) has emerged as a wish of X-Rite's clients. XCA is a smaller part of the FDC software solution and it represents an end-user application.

XCA allows end users to apply previously created color profiles in FDC process. Based on the color profile end user applies, colors on the screen shall be shown a bit differently, minor differences for untrained eye, but incredibly important for people who work with colors.

What is unique about this application is that each color profile has a predetermined adjustment of specific brightness on the computer screen so that those colors can be shown properly. Without an applied profile, the end user will see the colors differently.

Other end-user applications can only set up the specific color standard, without the possibility to adjust the percentage of the monitor brightness. Brightness is especially important to people who work with colors because it changes how the color is being perceived.

Through XCA, end users can choose which color profile they want to apply:

• sRGB,
• AdobeRGB,
• DCI-P3,
• Rec.709, etc.

When applied, these color profiles adjust the color representation on the monitor in accordance with color standard those profiles are created for.

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Results / Effects

Displays that are chosen by laptop manufacturers for color calibration have the option to apply color profiles. What does this mean for the end customers?

They can choose which color profile they want to use, according to their job or a project they are working on, and in that way adjust the color representation accordingly. They can also apply the same color calibration profile on multiple devices, so they can take their work with them, or share it with coworkers.

These advantages are especially valuable in:

• Art industry,
• Design,
• Gaming industry,
• Television production,
• Photography,
• Printing industry, and many others.

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