Letters, feedback, get it off your chest: 26 June 2008
Readers have their say on last week's news.
Re: Quark keeps its quirks in Version 8
$499 for an upgrade? Sorry Quark, there are those of us who still remember when upgrades cost three to four times that. Now there was a "quirk" guaranteed to turn off users. You lost me and I'm sure thousands of others. Your take it or leave it attitude ensured that someone like Adobe would see a ready made market and move in on your territory. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the collapse of such seemingly impregnable products as dBase 3 and Lotus 1-2-3. And now Quark I venture to say. You're only top of the heap as long as the public says you are.
Peter Haydock
The debate about the suitability of cheap Chinese colour viewing cabinets (I refer to Rick Norris' letter) is in danger of misleading printers and prepress operators that all colour problems can be solved by installing D50 (5000 Kelvin) lamps. A lamp can be 5000 degrees Kelvin in colour temperature and still not render colour correctly. The entire spectral curve of the lamp needs to be known, how much UV energy for example? What is the Colour Rendreing Index (CRI)?
Below 90 and you could be in trouble. Also, what is the surrounding cabinetcolour characteristic? Put good D50 tubes in a cabinet painted with non-neutralgray and a colour cast will eventuate. Munsell N8 gray is the accepted surround colour. Munsell wrote the book on colour rendering long ago.
In a nutshell, the entire booth, not just the lamps, should meet the ISO 3664:2000 standard.
D65 (6500K) lamps are in fact applicable for some applications. Show-Ads in its heyday used D65 for colour matching. Even D75 (7500K) lamps were once used as a daylight standard, about the colour temperature of an overcast sky. A clear blue sky can exhibit a colour temperature as high as 27000 degrees Kelvin. Sunlight has a lower colour temperature – 4300K to 6300K – why? Well it's yellowish isn't it?
So, when buying any colour viewing product, look beyond the colour temperature of the lamp, at the whole system, lamp, reflector, diffuser, cabinet and ask to see the ISO 3664:2000 compliance evidence.
It's all about standards.
Andy McCourt