Alternatives to Colorthink Pro?

I purchased Colorthink Pro one year ago when it first came out. It is the buggiest application I can ever recall running into (I have PC version). Reported over 60 bugs in the first month. Most have not been fixed, including bugs which show wrong colors for delta-E and erroneous numbers. This is after one year, and now on version 3.01 beta 8. No response on the Colorforums from Steve or anyone else from Chromix in regard to these multiple bugs, which make it difficult to work, and impossible to trust the data. I am ready to throw in the towel.

My question: is there any other application which will allow one to visualize gamut boundaries of profiles, data mapped as vectors, or similar kinds of things? If so, is it stable, or are bugs fixed when they are reported?

Color me Fed up in L.A.

--John

John, here's two links

http://www.tglc.com/english/PerfX/3D_Gamut_Viewer.html Mac & PC version (basic)

http://www.gamutvision.com/ makers of imatest - PC version, very comprehensive.

John,

Thanks, will check them out. Have you used either? Thoughts?

--John

John,

PerfX is free and is basic, it provides shaded 3d gamut plots and you can visually compare profiles against each other.

Gamutvision is extensive, i've only tried the demo but here's a list of examples from their website

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Gamutvision examples [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Identifying defective profiles — illustrates a popular profile with a glaring defect and points to a solution. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Evaluating printer profiles with Round trip — illustrates Gamutvision's Round trip rendering intent. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Profile mystery: The case of the smudged pines — sheds light on a profile defect that smudges a print of pine trees.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Black Point Compensation — shows the meaning of the mysterious checkbox.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Camera and scanner profiles — shows what happens when you convert to standard color spaces.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Printer gamuts: total and real — shows the difference between a printer's theoretical (i.e., maximum) color gamut and the real color gamut achieved when working with standard color spaces. [/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]. [/SIZE][/FONT]

Hi John H.,

See the tools listed on DOP's "Color management links exchange": http://www.outbackphoto.com/tforum/viewtopic.php?TopicID=1930

John N. already mentioned Gamutvision/PerfX.

I personally like Norman Koren's Gamutvision a lot (btw, I mailed you about Gamutvision some time ago when it was released )
I've been test-driving Gamutvision when it was still in Beta. I got in touch with Norman and he was very interested in my findings as a ColorThink user. It currently uses LittleCMS, but Norman might incorporate the new Adobe CMM.

Have you seen the LL article on Gamutvision? http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/fancy_graphics.shtml
Oh, and I just love the "Image Color Difference display", a gamut warning on steroids: http://www.gamutvision.com/docs/gamutvision_displays.html#imagediff

If you're on a Mac take a look at Alwan ColorPursuit.

Herman

Great listing Herman!

I wonder what Fabio of LZ and Jamie Roberts use?

Asher

Tried and purchased Gamutvision. Looks like it provides information in a way which is significantly different than Colorthink Pro. Appears pretty easy to use. Discovered one tiny buglet in the trial version (help screen says 20 trials left, but there were only 15

Thanks for info.

--John

> Discovered one tiny buglet in the trial version

Of course John

Too bad about ColorThink. Steve and his team should really set their priorities right, they'll lose more customers acting this way.

Priorities yes.

Just received Chromix mailing 'ColorNews Issue#25':

Quote:
"Introducing CHROMiX Maxwell

Attendees of this year's Color Management Conference in Phoenix were
treated to a special announcement and sneak preview of Maxwell.
Maxwell is a revolutionary new color management system based on a
central web-enabled color repository. Imagine a system you can easily
upload and download color measurements to for free*. On top of the
color repository, Maxwell offers device trending, color profiling,
profile sharing and measurement services. Built on a solid foundation
of clustered web and database servers Maxwell imports and exports
popular file formats and has a fantastic graphing engine for color
analysis and device trending. No more dongles, no more color
conversion problems, no more color coordination problems.

Maxwell will be available in the first quarter of 2007 by
subscription and other plans. We will have referral, reseller,
bundling and OEM opportunities available.

To attend a Webex presentation of Maxwell send an email to us here:
maxwellintro@chromix.com


Maxwell to Create Windows Vista WCS Profiles

An industry first, CHROMiX Maxwell will create color profiles for
Microsoft's new Vista operating system. Vista's WCS breaks new ground
in color management but its profiles are a proprietary new format.
Maxwell will create Vista WCS profiles for easy download and
installation."

Herman,

Unfortunately, I think Steve wants to work on what is of most interest to him at the moment. While his ideas and implementations are no doubt groundbreaking, there isn't any followup needed to create robust, bug-free programs. Perhaps there isn't a sufficient market for it, perhaps he just isn't interested. When told that some problems couldn't be re-created, I offered to let him run a debug version remotely on my system. Never heard anything again. I know these aren't system specific for the most part, because of about 60 bugs, 50 could be reproduced on two completely different systems (different motherboard, processor, graphics card, drivers, etc.). A few appeared to be system specific.

In its present form, I consider Colorthink Pro 3.01 beta 8 (the latest beta version, the original was so buggy as to be virtually unusable) to be what would generally be called an "early beta" in most software circles. There hasn't been much change in the last 4-6 months. Each successive "beta" is put out when the previous one expires (every 6-8 weeks). I stopped bothering to test about 4-6 months ago. Checking again revealed a dismal state of affairs.

Purchased gamutview, looking forward to exploring it. Thanks for the heads up.

--John

I have the utmost respect for Steve but I think you might be onto something here. ColorThink is a labor of love and has some ultra cool tools no one else has thought of let alone coded. But he needs some serious coding help! I wish X-Rite would just write him a huge check to sell it then put a team of engineers on it full time to clean it up. Pro certainly has way too many bugs and is very, very slow. Still, it's the only utility of it's kind I'll use.

Andrew,

Just wondering. You're on a Mac, did you ever try Alwan ColorPursuit?

Love ColorPursuit but it's a different beast. I use it more for statistical evaluations and ColorThink for gamut mapping of images and color spaces. There's more overlap now with Pro but I think you need them both.

Andrew Rodney said:

I have the utmost respect for Steve but I think you might be onto something here. ColorThink is a labor of love and has some ultra cool tools no one else has thought of let alone coded. But he needs some serious coding help! I wish X-Rite would just write him a huge check to sell it then put a team of engineers on it full time to clean it up. Pro certainly has way too many bugs and is very, very slow. Still, it's the only utility of it's kind I'll use.

Click to expand...

Yes, I will still use it because it is unique. If there was someone competent to just clean up the bugs the program would be mind boggling. As it is now I don't like using it because of the problems--but I still do! It doesn't help that the program is a dog in 3D graphs with my particular graphics card (Matrox P750). I put it on my Dad's system just to see if the bugs were system specific and it literally flew with a low end $50 graphics card. Unfortunately, 85% of the bugs were still present on that system.

--John