The New Challenge for Color Management in Digital Printing

Abstract

Since eight industrial leading companies formed the International Color Consortium (ICC) in 1993, color management based on ICC profile has become the de-facto standard for color reproduction in digital printing. Today, ICC profile and color management are hot research topics. However, it will become more difficult to describe the role or benefits of color management for any specific user in the near future because Microsoft, one of the eight founder members of the ICC, quitted the consortium last year and started to develop the next generation color management system based on scRGB rather than Profile Connection Space (PCS) recommended by ICC. This is a new challenge for ICC to greater uptake of ICC color management in the digital printing industry. This paper aims to address this challenge and its impacts on color management in digital printing industry and ICC. It first analyzes the differences between the color management architectures based on PCS and scRGB used by Microsoft's New Generation Windows Color Architecture (NGWCA). It then discusses the new features of Microsoft's NGWCA. Finally, it discusses an opportunity of further R&D for the next generation color management solutions, and proposes some future research and development directions such as color profile format specification, color appearance modeling, gamut mapping methods, and profile verification to address the challenge in the next generation of color management.