Wacom started shipping Wacom Color Manager, the company's new color calibration solution designed for photographers, designers and other creative professionals who want color accuracy across their workflow. As every artist knows, sharing and reproducing color can be quite frustrating. Colors that have been painstakingly created during the design phase can look very different depending upon the monitor, display or projector that the user, collaborators or clients are using to view finished work. Matching the colors on a display to the final output as photos, prints, animation or video can be even more challenging. The new Color Manager combines a colorimeter calibrator and custom profiling software – developed by market leading color expert X-Rite – to give Cintiq® users more speed and confidence throughout the creative process. "Bottom line, our customers work hard to create artwork. We want to help them gain full control over their process so that colors look the same on their displays," says Don Varga, Wacom's Senior Director of Market Strategy and Planning. "By eliminating the frustrations and guesswork inherent with color management, we are helping professional creators save valuable time and money, not to mention produce great images."
Teaming with X-Rite
Wacom worked with X-Rite, the leaders in digital color calibration and profiling, to develop an advanced, fast and user-friendly calibration tool. "Our Cintiq family of products tend to be the creative tools of choice, particularly in those industries where color accuracy makes a difference. We felt it was natural to add a dedicated and powerful color management system that is convenient and easy to use," Varga points out. The Wacom Color Manager offers specific performance advantages to users of Wacom's highest color performance displays, the Cintiq 27QHD line, but is engineered to provide calibration to the rest of the Cintiq family as well as other LCD, LED and wide-gamut display technologies. "Very often you see creative professionals with two displays, where one is entirely dedicated to color control. Because of the Cintiq 27QHD's advanced color gamut, users that employ Wacom Color Manager with the Cintiq alleviate the need for a costly second monitor, which speeds workflow, frees up work area space and helps reduce equipment costs."
The Wacom Color Manager calibrator, the instrument that rests on the screen and reads colors, and the profiling software work together in either a basic or advanced mode to provide users with easy-to-use, flexible and powerful performance. Basic mode calculates color profiles for the user and requires no prior knowledge of color calibration. Advanced mode gives users infinite control over a variety of facets critical to color balancing such as luminance, white point, contrast and gamma levels. "You do not have to be an expert to set your display to the right color profile. Our Color Manager solution does that for you," says Varga.
Users can save, reuse and share settings so that color is consistent over multiple monitors. "We worked closely with Wacom to customize the software for direct and seamless communication with the Cintiq 27QHD's scalar," says X-Rite's Jan Keller, Vice President OEM Sales. "With the unique features added to the Wacom Color Manager, you'll be able to achieve a more precise adjustment of gray scale gamma, white point and other primary settings. We are very excited to see the high standards of both companies coming together to deliver a uniquely accurate and versatile display solution for creatives."
Pricing and Availability
Current Cintiq owners can purchase the Wacom Color Manager, available now, from Wacom's eStore for $249.95 (USD), or authorized resellers.
Wacom customers working on the latest Mac OS X El Capitan (version 10.11) will need to update their Wacom Color Manager software from version 1.0.0 to version 1.1.0.
