Software's Colour Accuracy For Windows Vista

Software Imaging announced the availability of Colorcore 3, a set of photo imaging and rendering technologies claimed to provide greater colour accuracy for Windows Vista's XPS printing.

Software Imaging announced the availability of Colorcore 3, a set of photo imaging and rendering technologies claimed to provide greater colour accuracy for Windows Vista's XPS printing.

A key feature of XPS printing is its ability to support printing in high accuracy color as well as a wide gamut, which represents a real opportunity for manufacturers to bring high-fidelity color output to market.

Software Imaging said that XPS printing is a technology that OEMs will want to adopt, but it also presents significant challenges.

Driver developers must use XPS printing renderers (converters) that can render to a 16-bit per channel colour depth.

To fully realize the benefits of XPS printing within Windows Vista and avoid losing accuracy, developers must fully support true 16-bit colour and not simply re-process it to an eight-bit colour depth.

Colorcore 3 is claimed to make that easy to do.

The latest version of the Colorcore SDK makes it easier for developers to take advantage of Windows Vista's capabilities by offering high quality half-toning of 16-bit per channel input, said Software Imaging.

Colorcore 3 is said to convert 16-bit per channel colour data in to individual colour channels to print ink or toner-based output that is faithful to the original source image.

Jon Williams, group product manager for Software Imaging, commented: "Windows Vista removes long-standing operating system bottlenecks that forced users to work around colour issues through the use of application plug-ins and custom software.

OEMs can now take a camera raw source through Windows Vista's XPS printing path and render 16-bit colour half-toned output that is high quality and colour rich." He continued: "Printmagic XPS renderer and the Sorcerer driver development toolkit combine with Colorcore 3 to provide 16-bit colour depth support.

Developers can use the PrintmagicXPS renderer to create quality rendered 16-bit output that is then half-toned within the toolkit by Colorcore 3, resulting in greater colour accuracy and a tremendous quality improvement over eight-bit systems." Tony Harris, chief technical officer for Software Imaging, added: "Companies choosing to release Vista systems that only offer eight-bit colour depth are really missing an opportunity to improve colour output over legacy operating systems like Windows 2000 and XP.

We at Software Imaging have been preparing to take advantage of Windows Vista for several years and we think it's important that our customers are able to take full advantage of its XPS printing capabilities." Customers who already license the Sorcerer DDK can benefit from the new capability, said Software Imaging.

Sorcerer can be used to augment their drivers by adding an enhanced colour mode to existing driver descriptions and rebuilding.

Companies who prefer to use their own internal driver development tools can license Colorcore 3 and Printmagic XPS from Software Imaging separately.

Colorcore 3 is now available for OEMs wanting software to drive accurate colour output on their devices and for integration in to XPS or PDF and PostScript software RIPs.

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