basICColor catch 3 is Color Solutions’ colorimetric and densitometric measurement application. It uses a simple approach to measuring in that it provides you with a large number of measurement sets for many colour profiling needs and measurement devices. However, catch 3 also allows you to set up your own measurement options for one of the many supported devices.
Depending on the modules you purchased a license for, basICColor catch 3 will measure test targets for profiling alone, for printing process control, or for printing process certification. The first set of capabilities form the foundation of catch: the capability to measure test targets. The second and third set of capabilities are only required when you are working in a printing environment where you must be able to control the printing process or even certify that it complies with one of the many standards, including Fogra and Ifra standards.
basICColor catch 3 differs a lot from competing applications such as ProfileMaker Pro. It is meant to only provide an interface to the measurement of colour test targets for profiling, controlling and certifying. At first sight, the interface seems to be “bare”, with little or no options for customisation. When you look a little closer, you will see the “New Template” item in the left column of the Job Manager. The New Template item enables you to create a measurement setting from scratch.
Creating such a new setting involves a number of steps that have to be defined, and the connection to a measurement device that has to exist. As soon as you’re happy with your options, you can save this setting as a new template that will appear in the left column of the Job Manager. From then on,, whenever you need to perform a job that requires the setup of that template, you can simply select it and create a new job or select one of the jobs you defined earlier (and saved, much like a template).
Template systemA template has basic settings for a specific group of jobs. Let’s say you want to measure targets for colour management aimed at certification to the GRACol 7 standard. In that case, you will select one of the most appropriate groups, i.e. Target Group:Certification Targets: GRACol 7. In your template, you won’t be able to set the test target, as that pertains to jobs, not templates.
What you will have to set, and this is perhaps the hardest part when creating a new template, is which data you want to export to the measurement file. Choices include Index Name, Device Color, Color Name, Spectral Data, Lab, XYZ, Density, etc. In the template you will also set the file format, file extension, illuminant, and more elements related to the measurement basics.
Especially for GRACol 7 and other certification measurements, you will need the control and certification modules, which are sold separately, but which are accessed from the same interface (when no license exists for these, the options simply remain greyed out). In the control and certification tabs, you can prefill some fields that relate to the deltaE values (difference between the preset value and the measured value) the certification standard allows.
In these tabs you can also fill in the deltaE method. What I found a bit disturbing is that for none of these certification standards, the deltaE values and density tolerance is automatically filled in. The Color Solutions engineers certainly know these values, so why leave it to the user to fill them in? With certification, there is only a small tolerance margin anyway. On the other hand, for every paper type, the tolerance is different. Setting the values automatically would also involve the user filling in the paper type, and basICColor catch then having to scavenge a database of values.
Pre-defined Colour Measurement SettingsI’m sure it could be done, but perhaps not at the price point of the application. As soon as you have filled in the basic elements of the template, you can save it, and it will appear in the templates list at left. While Color Solutions ships catch 3 with a pretty large number of templates defined, some vendors who rely on Color Solutions for the software driving their equipment, add their own templates. Barbieri, for example, follows this route.
When a template has been saved, the right column of the Job Manager will show “New Job”. This item now allows you direct access to the template basic settings—which are now locked and can’t be changed from the New Job window—and to those settings that will differ from job to job. The windows for templates and jobs are basically identical; the only difference is that the Job windows will have some (templated) elements already filled in and locked. This makes the Job window effectively usable for creating a new job within the limits set by the template.
In other words, I can’t create a general test target measurement job in a template that’s destined to certify to Fogra, or whatever. This is good because it rules out many mistakes, and allows for an easy and efficient workflow management, especially when profiling and certification is a daily returning business. The Job window -among others—allows you to set the target you’re going to measure. Here I found the approach of basICColor catch 3 to be confusing—that is, however, not the software’s fault, but the lack of a manual explaining where you can find the test target images, which test targets go with which profiling job, etc.
Colorimetric Test Targets: Which Match Which?Existing, pre-defined measurement jobs—and again, there are many of those—can be edited. That also means you can examine them to get an idea of what to use for your own custom-created measurement job. But it’s no replacement for a manual or at least a listing of the targets. There is a manual which you can launch from the Help menu. However, the Help menu of my copy itself was broken on Mac OS X, and when I manually entered the file path, all I got was a German manual.
Now, to be honest, I do read German, but I have always had a grudge against manuals that are only available as an on-screen readable file. I want to be able to leaf through a paper thing, while I’m going back and forth between the screen and the book. This is quite impossible with a Help file… Even with the German guide open, I couldn’t make out where to find some of the test target images, or what they were called in reference to their reference files that you can only decipher from the interface.
This should be improved. Of course, when you’re going to use basICColor catch 3 in a production environment, chances are you’ll also take a course in using the software. But that should not matter: the test target images should be clearly associated with their reference files for usability and from a point of view of efficiency.
What happens when you’ve set up a job and want to start measuring? Well, you select the job and click the OK button. A new window will open with colour patches at left and a column of buttons at right. basICColor catch is not tightly integrated with measuring equipment as for example ProfileMaker is with the Eye-One Pro or Eye-One iO. For example, to use the iO, the software will not recognize—at least not my copy—the Eye-One’s button being pressed while you’ve carefully positioned its ‘bull’s eye’ over a colour patch. Instead, you will have to press the keyboard’s Return key with each positioning step.
Manual LackingOnce the measurement device has been properly positioned, or as with the Barbieri 50xy, the device has put itself in the starting position automatically, catch 3 will initiate a calibration session. When that one has finished, you can start the measurement process. During the process, the software will command the device to calibrate itself several times (with large test targets, anyway). basICColor catch 3 supports strip reading, where the equipment reads a strip of colour patches in one sweep, or patch reading where each colour patch is read one after the other.
Some test targets seemed to dislike the strip reading capability, with the iO going over the colour strip at least three times—from fast to very slow—only to finally give up with an error message. How to enter the patch reading mode is entirely a matter of finding out for yourself by lack of a manual. But it’s very easy: you just select the first patch to be measured, and from then on, the device will read each patch separately. It’s very elegant, and very straightforward (and it IS in the manual for those who read German).
The measurement results are saved to disk by default. There isn’t an extra dialogue that asks whether you want the results saved, as with ProfileMaker. The measurement file has an .cie extension by default, but it’s just a text file, as with any other colour management application’s measurement results.
Depending on how you want to take it from here, and what you have measured, you can then decide to drop the measurement file onto the CMYkick icon—a sort of dropRGB application, but then suitable for CMYK profiles.
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