A virtual printer and reference printing conditions

In a late binding workflow, data is commonly prepared in an output-referred state based on a reference intermediate RGB colour encoding. Such encodings may have a larger gamut than the target printing condition, and so there is some ambiguity over how to preview the data before it has been converted to the target printing condition. Here we propose an additional intermediate encoding, referred to as a 'virtual printer' which bridges the gap between three component reference RGB or PCS encodings, and reference CMYK printing conditions. The virtual printer has a large colour gamut which represents a superset of most available print gamuts. It is defined here in terms of the reflectance and colorimetric coordinates of the virtual colorants, and associated colour mixing model. When used in a colour reproduction workflow, documents can be initially rendered to the printer-like gamut of the virtual printer, and channel preferences (such as black generation) can be defined. Re-rendering to a reference printing condition and associated colour gamut is deferred, thus supporting re-purposing of the document.

• http://spie.org/x45035.xml