Color portability—reality in the '90s (panel session)

Will the high-quality color found in commercial prepress systems be available at the desktop publishing level? Some say it's impossible; others say it isn't. Panelists address issues such as coordinating the wide range of input, output, and display devices for color computing; bringing highquality color to the desktop with minimal memory; accommodating the variability of input/output; and using multi-vendor systems. They discuss issues regarding printers and processing, and calibrating hardware devices, and color in relation to printing and imaging. Efraim Araizi I wou ld now like to in t roduce m y pane l m e m bers... Since Color por t ab i l i ty has some th ing to do wi th even tua l ly mark ing paper , John Meyer has done the u l t ima te t r i u m p h of work, actually, as a color separa t ion person. He was do ing color mask ing as a s tudent , wh ich is the mos t diff icult and arcane m e t h o d of correc t ing color in pictures. In 1979 wi th a Ph.D in low t empera tu re physics b e h i n d him, he jo ined Hewlet t Packard Research, worked on the designs of t he rma l and inkje t engines, n o w incorpora ted in produc ts such as the Paintiet . Since he began as a physic is t work ing on the minu t i ae physics effect of wha t is ha ppe n ing in the nozzles of the jets, his in teres t grew and he was ass igned to pro jec t manage r at H.P. Labs where he is one of t he great author i t ies on image processing in color, image e n h a n c e m e n t and image por tabi l i ty . For myself , I 'm a new face at SIGGRAPH. I have for the last 30 years been dea l ing wi th digi tal image processing. I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the early '60s, at MIT, w h e n we were do ing satel l i te pay loads wi th digi ta l image processing onboard . In 1968, m y last e m p l o y e r I tek gave m e the capi ta l to start the Scitex company . For 21 years, I was founder and leader of Scitex. At Scitex we special ized in supp ly ing half a mi l l ion dol lar each tu rnkey systems for the graphic arts the p r in t ing and pub l i sh ing industry. But it was at Scitex tha t I me t the armies of craf tsmen, the armies of magic ians tha t are mak ing color h a p p e n every day. A year and some th ing ago I sold m y pos i t i on in Scitex, and wi th a group of Scitex veterans and wi th the approva l of Scitex I set up a new c o m p a n y in San Francisco Electronics for Imaging. W e have ded ica ted ourselves to fur ther the state of the art of Color Portabi l i ty . And more about it w h e n I make m y remarks. So, t h a n k you for jo in ing us. I have a couple of procedura l quest ions . It is the rules of t h e conference tha t there will be no image taking e i ther by v ideo cameras, by cameras or no t ap ing by tape recorder to pro tec t t he i n fo rma t ion so it will be pub l i shed in an o rder ly way. After the session we will vacate this hal l as p r o m p t l y as possible. We have a b reakout r o o m Room 246 be low and I bel ieve tha t all the speakers and all those tha t wan t to con t inue to react abou t w h a t we d id n o t manage to do in the t ime here, can cont inue . We will, of course, have t ime for ques t ions a n d answers. Thank you. Our first speaker, J im Kasson, please.