Importing Harmony Curves
Editing imported Harmony Curves
You can generally edit curves imported from Harmony, but there are limitations depending on how the curve was originally created in Harmony and whether a curve was intended to be used a Plate or Print Calibration curve.
Harmony doesn’t have the concept of distinct Plate and Print Curves in the same way ColorFlow does. In Prinergy, any Harmony curve can be selected and used as either a Plate or Print Calibration curve. However, only a designated ColorFlow Plate Curve can be selected as a Plate Curve in Prinergy, and only a designated ColorFlow Print Curve can be selected as a Print Curve.
See About Calibration Curve Types in Harmony, ColorFlow and Prinergy.
Displaying Imported Harmony Curves
When you import Harmony Curves into Prinergy, they will not all display in the Plate Calibration or Print Calibration tabs.
- By default, the Plate Calibration tab only displays imported Harmony curves of Harmony Plate type
- By default, the Print Calibration tab only displays curves of Harmony Paper type.
- However, you can display all imported Harmony curves under each tab by checking the Show Paper and Film Calibration Curves checkbox (Plate Curves tab) or Show Plate and Film Calibration Curves (Print Curves tab).
Editing Imported Harmony Curves
You cannot directly edit imported Harmony curves in ColorFlow. In order to edit an imported curve, you must first select the imported curve and click the Copy to Calibration Curve… button (if in Plate Calibration) or Copy to Transfer Curve… (if in Print Calibration).
- Once a curve has been copied as a Transfer Curve, it can be selected and edited.
Editing Plate Calibration Curves
An imported Plate Calibration curve can be copied and edited in ColorFlow, provided it was created in Harmony with a non-linear Current Curve and a Linear Target curve (typical for Harmony Plate Calibration curves.) Note that if an imported Harmony Plate curve was not created with a Linear Target curve, the curve will fail to copy as a Calibration Curve.
Once an imported curve has been successfully copied to the Plate Curves Calibration Curves panel, it can then be edited. The curve will be editable as a node-based curve, and will display a list of Tint In/Dot Area values corresponding to the Current Curve nodes specified in the original Harmony curve. You can edit the Dot Area response to change the measured plate response, which will change the resulting calibration curve. A Plate Calibration curve target response is assumed to be Linear and cannot be edited.
Editing Print Calibration Curves
Most imported Harmony curves can be copied to the Print Curves Transfer Curves panel and edited.
The editability of copied Print Transfer Curves can be different, depending on how the original Harmony Curve was created.
- Curves created in Harmony as Transfer Curves are editable using the Curve Adjustment sliders.
- Select the copied Transfer Curve and press the Adjust... button. This will display the Transfer Curve Adjustments panel, allowing you to adjust tonal range sliders up and down.
- For more info on using Curve adjustment sliders, see Adjusting a Print Calibration curve.
- Curves created in Harmony as Calibration Curves with measured values in the Current Curve are editable using Curve Adjustment sliders.
- Select the copied Transfer Curve and press the Adjust... button. This will display the Transfer Curve Adjustments panel, allowing you to adjust tonal range sliders up and down.
- For more info on using Curve adjustment sliders, see Adjusting a Print Calibration curve.
- Curves created in Harmony as Calibration Curves with a linear Current Curve are editable as a node-based Transfer curve by changing Tint In/Dot Area values.
- The Target Curve Node values defined in Harmony become the Node values displayed in ColorFlow.
- Select the copied Transfer Curve to display the Tint In/Out values under the Curve Definition pane in the data panel on the right side. For more information, see Print Transfer Curves.
Why were Calibration curves created in Harmony with linear Current Curves? Why weren't simple Transfer Curves used instead?
The creation of actual Transfer Curves in Harmony was rare (or non-existent) because Harmony used a method called Deviation mode to define Tint In/Dot Area values, and this method is very confusing to users. With Deviation mode, node adjustment values are entered as relative differences (such as -5%) rather than absolute values (such as 45%), and when the Harmony Transfer curve is saved, all entered deviation values are reset to 0. The Transfer Curve can be seen to apply an adjustment from the visual curve shape, but a user has no way to determine what the actual change values are.
Because users need to be able confirm actual values in an adjustment curve, a standard workaround was used to create the equivalent of a simple Transfer Curve. The workaround was to create a Derived Calibration Curve with a Linear Current curve and a Target Curve with the desired tonal corrections. If you use a Linear Current Curve, all values from the Target Curve transfer directly to the Calibration Curve.
For this reason, any Harmony Calibration Curve with a Linear Current Curve is deemed to be a simple Transfer Curve, and when copied, it will act like a ColorFlow Transfer Curve, where Tint In/Dot Area values are displayed and fully editable.