New X-Rite Color Profiler for Prepress, Publishing, Digital Printing, & Photo Markets

Theresa Stone

Press Release
X-Rite, Incorporated, the world leader in color management, measurement and communication technologies, announced i1Profiler, the company’s next generation color profiling software and PANTONE® Link, a new color swatch bridging software. Both new solutions are integral components of X-Rite’s widely anticipated next generation color profiling solutions. i1Profiler and PANTONE® Link offer unprecedented color quality for up to 8 color printing workflows, iterative profiling, ease of use for both advanced and novice users, peer-level workflow exchange, QA validation and verification against ISO, simplified color space selection, and spot color accuracy.
Accommodating a broad range of proficiencies and expertise i1Profiler lets pre-press, publishing, digital printing and photo professionals create custom profiles for their RGB and CMYK printers, monitors and digital projectors. i1Profiler features a number of unique color management capabilities, giving users complete power and control to create professional quality profiles. Using one convenient software tool, users can optimize their profiles and share them with their peers, rebuild profiles with ambient light measurements, compensate for optical brighteners in their papers, and use advanced controls for black generation and separation.
At the core of i1Profiler is X-Rite’s i1Prism engine, whose unique iterative profiling technology lets users build highly accurate printer profiles for up to 8-color printing workflows (RGB, CMYK and CMYK plus any other 4 colors). This reliable iterative technology — first introduced in X-Rite’s ColorMunki portfolio and now already adopted by numerous X-Rite OEM partners — is extremely robust, allowing for further profile optimization based on any combination of images, spot colors or captured colors. Users can select from any of the included PANTONE color libraries, including PANTONE FASHION + HOME, the new PMS+. This in turn results in the best possible image quality and color accuracy.
“X-Rite has long had a reputation for having some of the industry’s most powerful color profile engines. With our new i1Profiler, we have developed a next generation toolset that combines the best of our i1Match, ProfileMaker and MonacoPROFILER solutions,” said Iris Mangelschots, X-Rite’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “X-Rite has then taken it one step further with new algorithms for truly unmatched color results. Initial tests show marked tolerance improvements using this new iterative profiling technology compared to legacy X-Rite profiling software packages.”
i1Profiler includes the PANTONE Link software – a brand new color picker solution that incorporates the best features from previous color pickers (including i1Share and ProfileMaker solutions). The tight integration of i1Profiler with the PANTONE Link color swatch bridging software gives pre-press and design professionals integrated access to all the PANTONE color libraries for precise spot color matching and reproduction. PANTONE Link makes it easy for users to select spot colors and translate them into their production method of choice – PANTONE to HTML or CMYK, for example. Commercial photographers will also benefit when shooting corporate brand identities that demand specified color match.
PANTONE Link also includes a style guide wizard that assists designers and corporate marketing professionals to create color definitions for brand style guides including color data, and output profile data to ensure that brand colors are reproduced faithfully across applications, devices and geographies. With i1Profiler’s capabilities to optimize printer profiles for specific colors, the designer can be sure to print out the colors in the brand style guide in the most accurate way.
i1Profiler together with PANTONE Link, introduce new UI concepts that offers an unprecedented level of flexibility to address the specific needs of users at all levels. i1Profiler combines the ease of use of the wizard-driven interface found in i1Match and MonacoPROFILER and the flexibility of the menu-driven user interface found in ProfileMaker.
i1Profiler adapts itself perfectly to the skill set of the user, while maintaining its ability to produce outstanding profile quality results in either mode. With i1Profiler, X-Rite also introduces a new concept that provides the user with the flexibility to save and reuse assets and preferred settings via drag and drop technology. This enables peer-level workflow exchange, allowing users to create future profiles more efficiently and share those profile creation workflows with others. Teams can share their entire workflow data in addition to palette information and other color data using X-Rite’s Color Exchange Format (CxF) for unambiguous color data exchange.
i1Profiler is designed to give creative professionals high confidence in their results thanks to advanced visual and measurement-based quality assurance validation and verification functions. The new solution includes QA tools for soft-proofing and print-simulations to check the quality of the representation of PANTONE colors in a print production process, and according to ISO (G7, SWOP, PSO, Japan Color) on a display or printer. The high flexibility of the QA process allows individual definition of patches and QA criteria as well as the use of ISO 12647-7 wedges such as the Fogra or the IDEAlliance media wedges.
For print separation, imaging professionals know that the quality of the prints is heavily dependent on the quality of the generation of blacks. i1Profiler offers intuitive yet highly-advanced controls for black generation and separation settings, providing the highest degree of control and flexibility and color quality for custom CMYK (or CMYK+) profiles.
Traditionally ICC profiles are built so that the output will be viewed on D50 illumination, which is not always representative of the viewing environment of a finished print. i1Profiler is designed to optimize ICC profiles for different viewing conditions including daylight, tungsten, fluorescent lighting, and specific captured ambient light. Now photographers and other professionals who are concerned about the look of their image when hanging in a gallery, studio or any retail location can be assured their color is being viewed accurately for virtually any ambient condition.
In addition, users are no longer restricted by a limited set of paper sizes. i1Profiler provides users the flexibility to create their own printer test target, choosing from a broad range of paper sizes ranging from smaller photographic papers to large charts for large format printers or presses.
i1Profiler also includes X-Rite’s groundbreaking Optical Brightener Correction technology (OBC), that when connected to an i1iSis, can effectively and precisely compensate for color shifts in ICC output profiles typically caused by optical brightening agents (OBAs) in papers and other printing substrates. This results in prints with an improved visual match and reduces undesirable colorcasts caused by the brightening agents. Moreover, once users have set their OBC parameters, they can easily re-apply them to other profiles.
Upgrades, Promotion and Availability
i1Profiler will soon be undergoing beta testing and is scheduled for release in Q4 2010. Anyone purchasing an i1XTreme, MonacoPROFILER or ProfileMaker solution between April 1, 2010 and the shipment date of the new i1Profiler and PANTONE® Link software will receive a free software upgrade. X-Rite is also offering a $/€ 400 savings off the current ProfileMaker 5 and MonacoPROFILER solutions PLUS an additional $/€ 400 savings voucher for future X-Rite or PANTONE® products. For more information, please visit www.xrite.com/i1Profiler or www.XritePhoto.com/i1Profiler.