Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Susan and the rest,

 

 

I'll reply to everyone in one mail, so the information doesn't get scattered all over the place.

 

 

> This is huge...
> This opens another area of proprietary design which affects the fashion industry.



Yes you are correct. This is huge and might affect the textile industry as well. DIN accepted our proposal because we argued as follows:


1) If a proprietary colour spec is being used in workflows, everyone needs a licence, so the choice of one person or group affects everyone else (vertical barrier).


2) It gets even worse across sectors. Imagine you just selected that nice Pantone spot colour for your company logo. Now you want to paint your company building in that colour and tell the painter/paint vendor "I want Pantone X-Y-Z". The likely answer ist "We don't do Pantone; we have our own colour system. Here's a reference, choose your colour." (horizontal barrier 1)


3) Today, many companies produce across countries, which only accelerates the problems. (horizontal barrier 2) This is the reason as to why DIN plans to take this colour standard to ISO later and make it an international standard.


The reason for starting with print was simply that all of the experts working on this are working in the printing industry. Plus, one of our partners is FOGRA (https://www.fogra.de/index.php?menuid=1=en), which is the leading organisation for printing standards in Europe and beyond.


Q:


"Since you already have a prototype, are you talking about metallic inks?"


No, metallic inks are off the table for now, as are neons. The prototypes have been created on VERY expensive inkjet printers with more than four inks. This is not feasible for regular print runs. The prototypes only served as a proof of concept for DIN.


"How do you define a real color system?"


As a system ;) In a system you can calculate e.g. complementary colours or colour harmonies. Pantone is just a collection of colours that was expanded and changed over the decades. There is no system behind it. NCS, on the other hand, is a real commercial colour system.


"Better in what way?"


It's open, free, and it uses LAB/HLC, so it covers the whole spectrum of colours visible to the human eye. Plus, unlike, e.g. Pantone, it's impossible to change the colour values or remove a colour from the system, because it's all based on physics and math.


"At what stage of work within DIN will ink formulas be published one way or another?"


At this stage (phase 5 of 9) it's not even sure that the ink formulas will be part of the DIN spec. Phase 5 means working with ink manufacturers to create the formulas. If they don't become part of the standard, they will become freely available from our website and/or become part of the printed reference.


"So my question is: from your LCH representation, can you ensure the creation of an ink so that 2 unrelated people could create the same color?"


Yes, once we have the ink formulas. That's what's currently being worked on.


"And from the printshop point of view, getting any spot color from the catalog is just about following a mixing recipe accurately, so it's easy and not too bothersome."


For the printshop maybe (not necessarily), but not for the ink manufacturers. These must pay licence fees to Pantone et al. for the use of the ink formulas. It's a bit like Monsanto, really. Plus, some Pantone inks are very hard to reproduce, because recipes are too fine-grained (e.g. one tenth of base colour x), and ink vendors have to juggle with 18 base colours for these recipes! This makes the production quite expensive. Add to that the experience of many in the printing industries that printed Pantone colour references are notoriously unreliable for various reasons. The HLC Colour Atlas, on the other hand, will be produced with strict quality controls in place.


As to the file format, the contract with DIN requires that we create two palettes in the CxF3 format (https://www.xrite.com/page/cxf-color-exchange-format), one with LAB values another one with spectral colours. The latter are even more precise than LAB, but I don't think any software supports it right now. We will make those available for download from our website and also add LAB-based versions as SBZ and ASE files, respectively. SBZ and ASE don't support spectral colours, so projects that want to use the latter need to write an import filter for CxF3 ;)


According to the current roadmap the final colour references and the digital palettes will be available in April 2018. The standard is supposed to be written by June 2018 and will then be published by DIN.


I hope I have answered all of your questions.

 

 

Christoph

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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Susan Spencer]

This is huge...
This opens another area of proprietary design which affects the fashion
industry.


On Nov 30, 2017 19:36, Christoph Schäfer  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I have some incredible news for you.
>
>
> Yesterday freieFarbe/freeColour received a message from the German
> industrial standards organisation (DIN) that our proposal for an open
> standard for "Open Colour Communication" based on the HLC colour model (aka
> as Lhc) has been accepted and will become a German national standard soon
> (because we have prepared this carefully during 2016 and 2017).
>
>
> What does this mean? First, it will no longer be an initiative by a tiny
> non-profit organisation, but a national standard, and since DIN is very
> influential internationally, it will become a de-facto standard in other
> countries as well. Plus, it may be possible to make this an ISO standard
> via DIN.
>
>
> In addition, DIN will support the formulation of the standard and our work
> with substantial sums, not the least because the creation of a standard and
> pushing its way through all the respective instances and expert checks is
> expensive (would've been 25,000 EUR in our case, which has been reduced to
> zero, because it's an open and non-commercial project). We will also
> receive some money for meetings, travel expenses etc. from DIN.
>
>
> One of the reasons we got so far is support by parts of the printing
> industry in Germany and Switzerland. The prototype of the printed colour
> reference, which we presented to DIN, was only possible thanks to a
> donation of inks by an international manufacturer of digitial printing
> machines. We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and
> Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be
> reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours, so printing companies can actually
> order spot colour inks by just inserting the HLC colour code in their order
> forms.
>
>
> The printed colour reference has the form a ring binder. Colours are
> sorted by their H-values (H=Hue) in steps of ten. Luminacity (L) uses steps
> of five, and chroma (C) also steps of ten. We plan to refine this later to
> also present the H-values in steps of five.
>
>
> This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone
> or RAL. Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone &
> co, which is not only better, but also supported by a national standards
> organisation and some major players in the industry. There are no licensing
> costs to pay for anyone who wants to use the colour system, not for
> software producers and neither for the ink mixing formulas. The latter is
> important, because vendors like Pantone ask for a lot of money from ink
> producers for the mixing formulas, whilst the open HLC system is gratis.
>
>
> The PDF version of the colour reference and the digital colour palettes
> will be published under a CC licence (CC BY-ND 4.0). The printed colour
> reference will cost some money to cover the production costs, but it will
> be much cheaper than the ones from Pantone & co, because we only need to
> cover our expenses and do not intend/aren't allowed to as a non-profit
> organisation to commercialise it. Moreover, everyone else will be free to
> print their own references, and there are no trademarks involved.
>
>
> Another important aspect is that the HLC colour system, being a national
> standard, will be very hard to attack legally by commercial vendors like
> Pantone or RAL, who are known to play hardball when it comes to
> competition. They would have to take on DIN, which I'm sure they'll think
> about twice.
>
>
> We'll start with Germany and Switzerland, because that's where most of our
> members and supporters are from, but we plan to release an English version
> of the colour reference as soon as the colour system has been formally
> adapted as a standard.
>
>
> Currently, an older version of the HLC palette is already included in
> Scribus 1.5.3+ (L*a*b*) and the latest LibreOffice (sRGB). And speaking of
> Scribus, the juicy bit is that the colour reference will most likely be
> produced with Scribus 1.5.4svn, because it offers the highest colour
> precision for fill colours (64 bit). No other DTP software comes close in
> this regard.
>
>
>
> Christoph
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Susan Spencer]

Congratulations Christoph!

Do you have an article we could link to on social media for the Fashion
Freedom Initiative (https://fashionfreedom.eu)?
This will beneficially affect many industries.

Best,
Susan

On Nov 30, 2017 19:36, Christoph Schäfer  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I have some incredible news for you.
>
>
> Yesterday freieFarbe/freeColour received a message from the German
> industrial standards organisation (DIN) that our proposal for an open
> standard for "Open Colour Communication" based on the HLC colour model (aka
> as Lhc) has been accepted and will become a German national standard soon
> (because we have prepared this carefully during 2016 and 2017).
>
>
> What does this mean? First, it will no longer be an initiative by a tiny
> non-profit organisation, but a national standard, and since DIN is very
> influential internationally, it will become a de-facto standard in other
> countries as well. Plus, it may be possible to make this an ISO standard
> via DIN.
>
>
> In addition, DIN will support the formulation of the standard and our work
> with substantial sums, not the least because the creation of a standard and
> pushing its way through all the respective instances and expert checks is
> expensive (would've been 25,000 EUR in our case, which has been reduced to
> zero, because it's an open and non-commercial project). We will also
> receive some money for meetings, travel expenses etc. from DIN.
>
>
> One of the reasons we got so far is support by parts of the printing
> industry in Germany and Switzerland. The prototype of the printed colour
> reference, which we presented to DIN, was only possible thanks to a
> donation of inks by an international manufacturer of digitial printing
> machines. We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and
> Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be
> reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours, so printing companies can actually
> order spot colour inks by just inserting the HLC colour code in their order
> forms.
>
>
> The printed colour reference has the form a ring binder. Colours are
> sorted by their H-values (H=Hue) in steps of ten. Luminacity (L) uses steps
> of five, and chroma (C) also steps of ten. We plan to refine this later to
> also present the H-values in steps of five.
>
>
> This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone
> or RAL. Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone &
> co, which is not only better, but also supported by a national standards
> organisation and some major players in the industry. There are no licensing
> costs to pay for anyone who wants to use the colour system, not for
> software producers and neither for the ink mixing formulas. The latter is
> important, because vendors like Pantone ask for a lot of money from ink
> producers for the mixing formulas, whilst the open HLC system is gratis.
>
>
> The PDF version of the colour reference and the digital colour palettes
> will be published under a CC licence (CC BY-ND 4.0). The printed colour
> reference will cost some money to cover the production costs, but it will
> be much cheaper than the ones from Pantone & co, because we only need to
> cover our expenses and do not intend/aren't allowed to as a non-profit
> organisation to commercialise it. Moreover, everyone else will be free to
> print their own references, and there are no trademarks involved.
>
>
> Another important aspect is that the HLC colour system, being a national
> standard, will be very hard to attack legally by commercial vendors like
> Pantone or RAL, who are known to play hardball when it comes to
> competition. They would have to take on DIN, which I'm sure they'll think
> about twice.
>
>
> We'll start with Germany and Switzerland, because that's where most of our
> members and supporters are from, but we plan to release an English version
> of the colour reference as soon as the colour system has been formally
> adapted as a standard.
>
>
> Currently, an older version of the HLC palette is already included in
> Scribus 1.5.3+ (L*a*b*) and the latest LibreOffice (sRGB). And speaking of
> Scribus, the juicy bit is that the colour reference will most likely be
> produced with Scribus 1.5.4svn, because it offers the highest colour
> precision for fill colours (64 bit). No other DTP software comes close in
> this regard.
>
>
>
> Christoph
> ___
> CREATE mailing list
> CREATE@lists.freedesktop.org
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/create
>
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Gregory Pittman]

On 12/01/2017 09:17 AM, Jehan Pagès wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
>  wrote:
>>
>>
>> 1 дек. 2017 г. 6:36 пользователь Christoph Schäfer  написал:
>>
>> We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and
>> Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be
>> reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours
>>
>>
>> Since you already have a prototype, are you talking about metallic inks?
>>
>>
>> This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone
>> or RAL.
>>
>>
>> How do you define a real color system?
>>
>> Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone & co, which
>> is not only better,
>>
>>
>> Better in what way?
> 
> Though I still think it is a very cool news, I actually join
> Alexandre's questions above.
> You seem to think that your color system is better and "real" because
> it is based off sorted numerical values, with meaning in color science
> (LCH).
> 
> Yet the real power of Pantone is that they were not born out of
> numbers but from actual physical inks (the 18 basic Pantone colors).
> So with the basic colors being "approved" by the company, getting any
> color is a matter of precisely following a recipe. This ensures that
> *theoretically* you should always get the same color at every
> printshop.
> 
> This is based off real life and somehow meets expectations of people.
> I'm not saying that Pantone is great. They have tried for years to
> copyright colors and stuff. They are just trying to squeeze money
> because that's what most companies do. Colors should indeed be managed
> by a non-profit with the goal to improve accuracy and reproducibility.
> Yet saying that such companies don't have a real system is wrong IMO.
> Somehow people who want to print may not care that much about numbers,
> sorting and stuff. They mostly want reproducible colors. And from the
> printshop point of view, getting any spot color from the catalog is
> just about following a mixing recipe accurately, so it's easy and not
> too bothersome.
> 
> So my question is: from your LCH representation, can you ensure the
> creation of an ink so that 2 unrelated people could create the same
> color?

Ultimately, it would seem that this comes down to what sort of traction
this gets with commercial printers. They are the market for Pantone and
other inks. At the same time, there is ongoing development of color
management by printing machinery, not dependent on a particular set of
inks, with standardization being a good thing. It would be good to hear
some reaction to this from ink manufacturers and printers.

Greg

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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 5:17 PM Jehan Pagès wrote:

Though I still think it is a very cool news, I actually join
> Alexandre's questions above.
>

Frankly, the DIN news covers most of the concerns I've had about
FreeColour/freieFarbe since its inception.

I'm still unsure about the potential market penetration, because, as far as
I can tell, businesses don't have to make a switch unless they do a
government job, and switching to a cheaper solution implies a lot of
showcases all around (the "better safe than sorry" mindset).

At this point there is no telling if the FreeColour matching system is more
reliable than PMS. The broad market hasn't seen the prototype yet. And IMO,
that's the most intriguing part.


> So my question is: from your LCH representation, can you ensure the
>
creation of an ink so that 2 unrelated people could create the same
> color?
>

If it does work reliably, it removes part of the "black box" effect that
PMS has on the industry. Which would be quite good already. That said,
reliability depends a lot on the print shop. There would be a long
transition period.

Personally, I couldn't care less if someone is being hostile towards
Pantone or telling they got no real color matching system (they are big
boys, they can take care of themselves). If it takes a few more years to
showcase a real print run of 100K copies of anything in full color and
metallic inks, all done with Scribus and spot colors from FreeColour, then
so be it. The market will decide for itself.

Alex
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Jehan Pagès]

Hi!

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
 wrote:
>
>
> 1 дек. 2017 г. 6:36 пользователь Christoph Schäfer  написал:
>
> We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and
> Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be
> reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours
>
>
> Since you already have a prototype, are you talking about metallic inks?
>
>
> This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone
> or RAL.
>
>
> How do you define a real color system?
>
> Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone & co, which
> is not only better,
>
>
> Better in what way?

Though I still think it is a very cool news, I actually join
Alexandre's questions above.
You seem to think that your color system is better and "real" because
it is based off sorted numerical values, with meaning in color science
(LCH).

Yet the real power of Pantone is that they were not born out of
numbers but from actual physical inks (the 18 basic Pantone colors).
So with the basic colors being "approved" by the company, getting any
color is a matter of precisely following a recipe. This ensures that
*theoretically* you should always get the same color at every
printshop.

This is based off real life and somehow meets expectations of people.
I'm not saying that Pantone is great. They have tried for years to
copyright colors and stuff. They are just trying to squeeze money
because that's what most companies do. Colors should indeed be managed
by a non-profit with the goal to improve accuracy and reproducibility.
Yet saying that such companies don't have a real system is wrong IMO.
Somehow people who want to print may not care that much about numbers,
sorting and stuff. They mostly want reproducible colors. And from the
printshop point of view, getting any spot color from the catalog is
just about following a mixing recipe accurately, so it's easy and not
too bothersome.

So my question is: from your LCH representation, can you ensure the
creation of an ink so that 2 unrelated people could create the same
color?
I'm not a color expert so I may be missing something. But physical
colors can be measured and get a LCH representation. But here we need
to do the opposite. Can it be done accurately and easily?

Jehan

P.S.: I believe I met you in some summit in Berlin a few years ago and
raised similar concerns.

> At what stage of work within DIN will ink formulas be published one way or
> another?
>
> Alex
>
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 4:28 PM Jehan Pagès wrote:

Also what is SBZ? I assumed some kind of format, but it would only
> return me some video project extension from some software.
>

It's the file format of SwatchBooker.

http://www.selapa.net/swatchbooker/
https://github.com/olivierberten/SwatchBooker

FreeColour uses it for the original (unconverted) color palettes.

I have no idea if they extended the file format beyond what's in the latest
code in SwatchBooker's Git. You'd have to ask Christoph about that.

Alex
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Jehan Pagès]

Hi!

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Alexandre Prokoudine
 wrote:
>
>
> 1 дек. 2017 г. 7:35 пользователь "Jehan Pagès" написал:
>
> Not sure what we could do though since printing is not our specialty
>
>
> Writing SBZ loader for GIMP would be a good start :) Especially since we now
> have LCH all around.

Ahahah!
Yes. I was mostly speaking of trying to make it a standard (even if
just a defacto one) in France too. Since it's no use to have support
in the software if printing shop can't print these. :P
But you are right that having support in GIMP would help too, even to
make it a standard. :-)

Also what is SBZ? I assumed some kind of format, but it would only
return me some video project extension from some software.

Jehan

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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

1 дек. 2017 г. 7:35 пользователь "Jehan Pagès" написал:

Not sure what we could do though since printing is not our specialty


Writing SBZ loader for GIMP would be a good start :) Especially since we
now have LCH all around.

Alex
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Re: [CREATE] freieFarbe/freeColour HLC colour system to be accepted as a national standard for "Open Colour Communication" in Germany

[Alexandre Prokoudine]

1 дек. 2017 г. 6:36 пользователь Christoph Schäfer  написал:

We're currently cooperating with ink manufacturers in Germany and
Switzerland to establish ink formulas for HLC colours that cannot be
reproduced in CMYK, aka as spot colours


Since you already have a prototype, are you talking about metallic inks?


This is a real colour system and not just a colour collection like Pantone
or RAL.


How do you define a real color system?

Most importantly, it is a free and open alternative to Pantone & co, which
is not only better,


Better in what way?

At what stage of work within DIN will ink formulas be published one way or
another?

Alex
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