After the successful preview on ITMA Barcelona, Datacolor presents its revolutionary new Color Assessment System, Datacolor Viewport™ in a further enhanced and close-to-release Version. The system, which will be offered for sale in early summer 2012, makes the visual color control process free of errors. “The system´s successful presentation at several internal and global events since last September indicated to us that we´re meeting a huge market need with our upcoming solution”, says Eric Alho, Product Marketing Manager at Datacolor, responsible for the Product. “Not only the positive feedback from existing prospects and potential customers in Asia, North- and South America and Europe made us so excited about the vacation season happening launch. Also the quite useful and detailed input about enhancements, the prototype from Barcelona should receive for greater market acceptance was picked up by our R&D team and is now implemented into the system. ” Eric Alho continues.
This new color assessment and visualization system will allow for great and positive changes to the traditional, visual color assessment process. Because colors look different to everyone’s eyes, the visual color assessment process may fail. In addition, the time and money consuming submission process of physical samples has a chance to come to an end. With this new technology Datacolor eliminates the human-induced problems. This system will be able to visualize and provide Color Performance Metrics for laces, prints, multi-colored woven materials, heathers and all kinds of non-solid materials, by acquiring color corrected images under 3 different lights. In that regards, the system provides a unique way of detecting Metamerism, that is to say a standard and batch show varying color differences under alternative lights.”
Alho remarked that with the new system on display, a verified pre-production unit, the metamerism can be assessed numerically and that this is the first system that allows real remote visualization, in a pretty similar way like the visual color viewing process is working actually on a local base. By the system captured and to the human color-sensitivity adjusted images, can be received and sent through cloud server technology. The globally distributed supply chain receives accurate images of the seasonal color standards and supply back to their retail- brand- and specifier-customers an image of the production batch, to allow assessment on the highly accurate, calibrated Monitor. Just in the same way, like a physical sample would have been sent. The system also allows numerical assessment of individual color differences under Day- Home- and a choice of two Store-Lights (TL84 and U3500) and thus provides information about Metamerism. Because the operator can choose specific parts from an image at the pixel-level and compare them numerically, very small details of prints and multi-colored woven can be analyzed in-depth. “By this way, we obtain the color difference information, from a real, color-calibrated, and to the human observer adjusted, images,” said Alho.
We´re excited about the trends in Turkey
After we saw a growth in the Turkish textile industry, starting in 2010 that continued along 2011, we expect an extreme vitality in the Turkish market in 2012,” said Alho. “We still regard the Turkish market as one of the largest and also the fastest-growing within Europe, and Viewport plus all other state-of-the-art Color Management solutions from Datacolor have always been, and will continue to be, a great help to the investment-affine, Turkish textile industry.”
Complete Product Range for improved color quality in textiles
On this year´s ITM show in Istanbul, Datacolor presents its complete product portfolio of proven Instruments and world-leading color management software. Next to the portable Spectrophotometers Datacolor Check™ and for the first time, the brand new “45G”, the leading portable instrument with 45/0° geometry – specifically to detect texture differences in Color QC, the high-end laboratory-grade Spectrophotometers are on display. “With the unbeaten accuracy and inter-instrument agreement, even without the need for profiling, the Datacolor 600/650 represents still the most suitable instrument for color measurement and communication across locations”, says Eric Alho. Only when 2 instruments measure the same, suppliers and customers can take the benefit of digital color data exchange. With its off-the-shelf accuracy, the Datacolor 600 prevents that questionable profiled instruments become digital islands. Where one supplier might get great accuracy to one customer´s instrument, but not across a global and widely distributed supply chain, different profiles might be used to ensure the harmony of results across a fleet on Instruments.
To ensure and control the instrument´s performance, not only across multiple suppliers but as well for distributed manufacturing sites, the Datacolor GUARDIAN™, a preventive maintenance software tool, allows verification and checking a fleet of instruments and thus creating the confidence that the taken measurements are based on a properly functioning instrument.
“With our complete product portfolio for the color-development and –approval process, Datacolor is the only systems- provider, from which established Instruments and proven Software for color-specification and –matching, plus Lab-Dispensing and –Dyeing can be obtained” says Alho. With the new AHIBA IR and IR pro Lab-Dye machines Datacolor continues the company’s competencies for Lab-Dyeing since it was funded over 40 years ago. AHIBA has always been a very important part of our product offering and the Brand stands for itself, Mr. Alho continues. “With our new and novel injector-less dosing configuration – a unique technology for beaker dyeing, we show that the innovation continues”. Datacolor is also known worldwide, for the success of their Auto Lab™, gravimetric, tubeless dispensers. “The accuracy and speed of these types of machines fit perfectly to our high level demands towards the solutions we want to provide. Only when providing the best-in-class solutions, that aim for superior quality and faster production turnaround, Datacolor remains the most recognized solution provider, to the textile and apparel industry. We´re living and sharing the same high quality concerns than our customer base does”, comments Alho.
The conversion of accurate color recipes from the Lab, into comprehensive and potentially for every dye lot different production recipes is a specialty from Datacolor since the early 1990´s. “The continuously enhanced Datacolor PROCESS, Lab-To-Bulk software, becomes every day more important for successful dye house operations. Tighter environmental regulations and every day higher quality demands, combined with frequent changing substrates and dyestuff combinations make it hard to remember each and every needed exception, when a dye lot is going to be scheduled for a specific machine, based on defined quantity and quality demands”, continues Alho”. With Datacolor PROCESS, all this dyeing know-how gets stored into a relational database and is available at the click of a button, when Lab recipes have to be converted into Production Dye lot Information.
At the same time of the ITM event in Istanbul, we´re about to launch a new release of all our main software packages. We upgraded the system-inherited database to its latest revision and added several new and useful functionalities, specially tour leading Color QC Software, Datacolor TOOLS 2.0™.
About Datacolor
Datacolor is a global leader in color management solutions and color communication technology. The world's leading brands, manufacturers, creative professionals and consumers have been choosing Datacolor's innovative technology and solutions to consistently achieve the right color for nearly 40 years. A Swiss held company, Datacolor's global presence encompasses a sales, service and support network serving customers in more than 65 countries throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, along with 13 worldwide operation and production facilities. Industries served include apparel and textile, paint and coatings, automotive, plastics, photography, home theater and others.
