The Hindu Business Line : HP unveils new technology for designers

Hewlett-Packard, a $94.1-billion IT company, has unveiled a new technology that will help designers or photographers print an image as seen in the monitor.

The technology, called HP DreamColor Technologies, will enable designers to produce "accurate, predictable and consistent" colours across a series of digital devices and applications. Designers will get accurate colour proofs of what they can expect to see in a final product for large commercial projects, said Mr V.S. Hariharan, Vice-President, Graphic Arts and Business, HP Imaging and Printing Group, Asia Pacific/Japan.

In an industry where consistency matters, HP DreamColor provides all prints look like the original.

No two images from different devices have perfectly matching colours. However, with HP DreamColor the vibrant blue printed today will look the same when printed months from now, he told newspersons.

Mr Don Tan, Colour Consultant, Large Format Printing, Imaging and Printing Group, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP, told Business Line that with the new technology print service providers (clients of HP) need not go to external colour consultants, who charge $100-$200 per hour to give perfect matching colours.

Entertainment sector

The lack of consistency of colour throughout the entertainment system - right from creation to viewing to printing - is frustrating. Devices with HP DreamColor are embedded with spectrophotometer (a device for measuring light intensity) and solves the problem by giving a uniform colour for images, he said.

The HP DreamColor was born out of the company's success in meeting the standard for colour accuracy at DreamWorks Animation SKG, an American animation studio producing animated films, notably Shrek (2001). "You can walk from desk to desk, or desk to theatre, or theatre to review room, and colour should be consistent and accurate," Mr Ed Leonard, Chief Technology Officer, DreamWorks, said in a release.

Colour perception was a complex phenomenon involving the interaction of light with materials such as paper and ink and the environment in which they are viewed. Accurately matching colours from display imaginary to print has been a long-standing challenge for imaging engineers. Till date, there has not been an effective control colour reproduction among various devices, Mr Tan said.

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