Don Hutcheson has been a leading figure in color management for
decades, with inventions like the "5th color control" for Linotype
(now Itek) scanners in 1982, DuPont's HyperColor™ software in 1993, and
ColorBlind's MaxCYM process in 1996.
Now principal of Hutcheson Consulting in New Jersey, Don's firm designs and installs color management systems for high end separators, printers, publishers and software developers. Don also teaches color management at GATF. Here he shares his thoughts with Colorhythm's Jeff Harmon:
[11.19.2002]
Interview with Don Hutcheson: Part 1
Jeff: Don, can you give us all just a brief bit on your background first? I know you've been involved in digital imaging in some form or another for over 30 years.
Don: I was lured into this industry by a passion for photography and I still look on pre-press and printing as simply extensions of photography. I can honestly say my work is my hobby.
My training began with a 5-year apprenticeship in photo-engraving, during which time the company bought New Zealand's second color scanner (a Hell C296) on which I proceeded to make every mistake possible. But ignorance and passion are good teachers.
In 1975 I left New Zealand for six months and never looked back. I worked for a year and a half in Iraq training nuclear physicists (I kid you not) to run a Linoscan 204 at the Mosul University Press. Then for a time I was a scanner operator in London until the union said I was working too hard!
In 1979 I came to the States to run the technical side of Linotype-Paul Scanner Division (later Royal Zenith and then ICG) but in 1988 I jumped ship to sell Crosfield scanners to Photolabs. Big mistake. Right market, wrong time. Photoshop and desktop scanners won instead.
When DuPont bought Crosfield in 1990 I worked for a time in R&D. But in 1995 DuPont cut their pre-press losses, and along with a few thousand others I was looking for work.
Apple had just introduced ColorSync 2.0 and I saw a demo of Franz Herbert's ColorBlind software. The results were pretty awful but the potential was obvious. What a concept! Color separations without years of experience! I figured if anyone ever got it right I'd be out of a job. So, on the principle of 'if you cant beat them, join them' I decided to become a 'color management consultant' (for want of a better title) and this time it was the right idea at the right time.
A few months with Franz and Dan Caldwell and their fledgling software improved enough that I could take it to early users and (usually) make it work. But they sold the company in 1997 and ColorBlind lost it's essential spirit. Since then companies like Monaco and GretagMacbeth have taken the lead in profiling software, which, combined with improvements in Photoshop, have really helped color management come of age.
My big thrill today is teaching CMYK users to work more efficiently and with better quality in an all-RGB workflow based on ICC profiles. That and teaching press profiling make up the bulk of my business.
Jeff: I've read that you were an important influence in several advances in color management, one being as advisor to GTI to create a dimmable viewing booth, which now all of us know to be crucial to good soft proofing. Can you tell us a little about how that advance happened?
Don: In 1981 I was asked by a newspaper how to scan color negatives on a drum scanner (there was no other kind of scanner back then.) I designed a small circuit that inverted the photomultiplier signals before the scanner's color computer. This showed that negative scanning was feasible, but it wasn't viable because you didn't know what you were doing until you made a proof. Very inefficient.
So I persuaded Peter Nielson, our UK R&D guru, to build a video pre-viewer that showed a low-res image before it was scanned. Every scanner control affected the screen just as it would a proof, which enormously simplified the then-mystical art of color scanning.
The screen could be adjusted to simulate a CMYK proof, but it was hard to know if the screen matched anything in normal room lighting. So I experimented with wrapping black tape around the tubes of a small D50 viewing booth loaned to us by GTI. It worked but it was a bit of a fire hazard and not everyone had the patience or the right kind of tape. So I persuaded GTI's Fred McCurdy to build a booth with a dimming circuit. He grumbled something about 'I'll never sell another one' but today GTI's Soft-View is a best-seller. (Thanks again, Fred.)
Jeff: And you worked with Franz Herbert and Dan Caldwell when they were with ColorBlind as well (Franz and Dan are now with Integrated Color Solutions). What was the nature of your work together?
Don: I first met Franz and Dan in the late eighties at Pre-Press Technologies, when they were trying to make color separations on a PC. By 95 they'd formed their own company and had written the first ICC-based profiling software compatible with ColorSync 2.0. I knew nothing about colorimetry, and they knew nothing about high-end CMYK color computers. So we pooled our ignorance and learned color management together. Ignorance and passion at work again. Lots of beer and coffee and long nights over broken code.
My contribution was mainly algorithms for things like GCR and HiFi color and testing the software at real-world clients. I was ColorBlind's worst critic but it was this kind of criticism that gave it the leading edge, in its day.
Jeff: And now you've created your own scanner target, the HCT Precision Scanner Target. What motivated you to create a new scanner profiling target? What's wrong with the IT8?
Don: The IT8 was originally intended as a visual tool to help set up scanners. I used it's predecessor, the Kodak Q-60 transparency, for years to calibrate color scanners, but the original 35mm version was too small to compare accurately to a proof. So Kodak's Chuck Rheinhardt designed a 4x5 version in the mid 1980s.
When the ICC was looking for a suitable scanner profiling target, the IT8
(which evolved from Chuck's 4x5 Q-60) seemed the logical choice. But it
lacks some essential qualities for good scanner profiling.
The main weakness is density range. The typical IT8 has a lower D-max, a higher D-min and less saturated colors than many originals. So a profile made from it may not capture important highlight or shadow detail, or extremely saturated colors in real-world transparencies. As early as 1995 I found that scanner profiles made with the IT8 lacked shadow precision and would sometimes lose detail in strong reds and blues.
I tried modifying the IT8 but the results were inadequate. So in 1995 I began developing what is now the HCT target. It has about twice as many patches, a much higher dynamic range and a wider range of saturated colors than the IT8, hence profiles made with it capture all the detail in virtually any original.
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