January 10, 2003 -- The International Color Consortium (ICC) announced progress on several initiatives to improve inter-operability of prepress and display systems following its recent semiannual meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. ICC brings together nearly 70 companies, associations and individual experts to collaborate on solutions to the numerous challenges of assuring consistent high quality color reproduction across diverse composition, proofing, display, prepress and printing systems. The ICC Steering Committee has approved a change to the profile specification that designates a "recommended" Chromatic Adaptation Transform, or CAT. This recommendation was necessary because although there are technical reasons for using a specific CAT of the several currently available, users frequently make this selection on the basis of convenience or simple chance. ICC’s recommended CAT should be used in all cases when there is no explicit reason to use another. It does not function as a "default," however, so a Chromatic Adaptation tag is still required. "This transform is most commonly used when generating profiles for displays, particularly when one of the displays used is very different in chromaticity to the D50," noted ICC Technical Secretary Tony Johnson. Other changes to the profile specification adopted by the ICC clarify the rendering intent usage for the preview tag, which is used in soft proofing when one device is used to simulate another. The Graphic Arts Special Interest Group and Workflow Group also reported to ICC that they have defined the most important challenges to implementation of color management in graphic arts workflows. The groups’ listing will serve as a prioritized guide to further changes needed in the ICC specification. The Architecture Group reported progress on a detailed specification of a baseline Color Management Module, which is also important in achieving inter-operability. ICC also noted that five new members have joined the Consortium since its spring meeting, bringing the total voting membership to 69. The International Color Consortium was established in 1993 by eight industry vendors for the purpose of creating, promoting and encouraging the standardization and evolution of an open, vendor-neutral, cross-platform color management system architecture and components. The outcome of this cooperation was development of the ICC profile specification, now in use by leading vendors of color management solutions. Lars Borg, Manager, Color Technology. Core Color, with Adobe Systems Incorporated, chairs the ICC. NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies serves as administrative secretariat, located at 1899 Preston White Drive, Reston, VA 20191, telephone 703/264-7200. The ICC website is located at www.color.org.