Tag Archives: technology

solid ink printers in UK

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As an alternative to laser or inkjet technology, Xerox offers solid-ink technology printers. A solid-ink printer uses solid sticks or blocks of ink instead of toner or inkjet cartridges. Xerox claims that solid-ink printers offer better colour consistency, are less expensive per sheet of printing and are more environmentaly friendly, producing less waste than lasers and inkjets – http://www.office.xerox.com/solid-ink/enus.html. The technology uses solid inks that are melted and sprayed onto the page as droplets, in a manner not dissimilar from inkjet printing. But because the inks are solid at room temperature, they can be supplied in blocks that are simply dropped into the printer, rather than being contained in a cartridge.

Now solid-ink technology is available in the UK with the launch of three Xerox ColorQube printers. However, they are out of the reach of the home user, costing around £13K each.

colour picker pen design

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color_picking03-thumb-550x422-22308

The idea is that you can use this pen to point at any object in the world, the pen then ‘extracts’ the colour, and then is able to write in that colour using a mixture of RGB inks that it contains.

Unfortunately, it’s just a concept, designed by Jinsu Park.

color_picking02color_picking01-THUMB

As far as I know there are no practical implementations of this interesting idea. One could make a strong argument that the pen should use CMY (or even red, yellow and blue) primaries since RGB primaries would result in a tiny colour gamut and wouldn’t allow the pen to reproduce any real colours at all. See http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/what-is-a-colour-primary/

automatic extraction of colour palette from image

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I just came across another interesting colour site – www.colorexplorer.com

This site provides a free service – you can upload an image and the site will extact a colour palette from the image (you can specify how many colours you wish to extract). Palettes are notated in hex codes and RGB values.

I just tried with with one of my images and chose to extact three colours; the result is shown below:

drum4

pallete

If you want to use a photograph as an inspiration for interior design, for example, you can write down the RGB values and then go to www.easyrgb.com – this site allows you to convert RGB values into commercial paint codes.

software aids colour design for colour blindness

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In a previous post I talked about colour blindness and the possibility of using coloured lenses to improve colour discrimination for suffers of colour blindness – http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/colour-blindness-news/

The task of designing images or copy that are legible to colour-blind users is a major concern in design. In the past I have used websites that allow you to submit an image or even a whole website and a simulation of how it might apear to a colour-blind viewer would be produced. Today I came across a really great tool called Color Oracle – see http://colororacle.cartography.ch/. This tool is free to download and runs on Windows or Mac systems. Once installed it runs in your system tray and allows you to simulate various colour-blindnessc conditions. The software is free to download and claims to use the latest algorithms for simulating colour-vision impairments.  Below is one of my images and a simulation of how it would appear to someone with tritanopia.

carlberg

new white roof coating

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A new white coating that reflects 85% of the heat that hits it is being trialled in Los Angeles. The new coating, developed by former military scientists Ronald Savin, reduces the surface temperature of the roof by as much as 50 C and thus reduces the amount of energy required to cool the interior of the building. Suffice to say, as I write this in rainy Cornwall, there is no requirement as yet for this coating in the UK!

white roof

For full story see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2009578076_roofs02.html

colormunki colour management

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Colour management is needed to try to ensure that when using computer systems colour fidelity is achieved across different machines and between soft and hard copy. Computers represent colour as three numbers, RGB. But the same RGB values displayed on different monitors will usually result in a different on-screen colour. In addition, there could be colour gamut issues; one monitor may be able to display colours that are simply out of the achievable range of another. When we consider printers the problem is even worse. The gamut of a printer is very different to that of a computer display. And printers tend to represent colour in terms of CMY or CMYK values. So the colour-management software has rather a lot to do to satisfy users.

A great deal of colour management goes on in computer systems of which the average user is completely unaware. This uses default settings and makes various assumptions but is normally good enough so that reds appear red and blues appear blue on any computer display or printer. Colour management has been built in to Apple software for a long while and is now also part of the Microsoft operating system. But the professional user may require more than is offered by the basic colour management that comes as part of all new systems. However, professional-level colour management comes at a cost and it’s not just financial. It is usually necessary to have to characterize each device (monitor display, printer etc.) that is to be used; and this requires colour measurment and some knowledge of colorimetry.

I recently came across a new product – ColorMunki 1.1 – released by X-rite that promises enhanced colour performance for colour-critical users. This seems to be an interesting product in that it is aimed at designers and photographers.

ColorMunk 1.1 – http://www.colormunki.com/ – is in fact a suite of software that also include a device for measuring colour. I am looking forward to trying this out. If anyone has any experience of this system that they would like to share it would be vey helpful.

Energy-aware colour palette

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Flat-panel displays based on organic LEDs are likely to become commonplace soon, replacing LCD panels, because they are more energy efficient. However, another potential advantage is that OLEDs use more or less energy depending which colours (hues) are being displayed. This is in contrast with LEDs which use the same amount of energy no matter which hue is being displayed. Research by Johnson Chuang at Simon Fraser University in Canada suggests that the selection of an energy-aware colour palette could save battery life on mobile devices. For further details see http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17419-limitedcolour-screens-could-boost-cellphone-battery-life.html