ColorFlow software
Kodak ColorFlow software delivers color relationship management that unifies all color control elements, such as ICC device profiles, DeviceLink profiles, and plate and print curves. Essentially, ColorFlow manages the relationship between all color control elements and device print conditions.
The ColorFlow software is where the color characterization data is stored, and where you generate and edit curves, import ICC device profiles, and import, generate or edit ICC DeviceLinks for use in the Prinergy refine and output processes.
After initially setting up a device in ColorFlow, you can create variations of that setup. For example, imagine that you invest a considerable amount of time measuring color responses and creating conversion and simulation links within a particular color setup. You establish your press condition as a color reference point. If you now want to simulate a different color response, all you need to do in ColorFlow is duplicate the color setup and choose the new simulation target. Using traditional methods, you would need to manually create several conversion DeviceLinks one at a time, to align with the new target.
About color setups
A color setup is the virtual structure you build to define the color relationship of all the devices in your printing task. It includes: device condition(s), a simulation target, and color control elements such as DeviceLink profiles and curves.
A color setup manages how its device conditions simulate the Primary Color Output (PCO). If those device conditions change, the relevant color control elements are automatically adjusted.
About snapshots
A ColorFlow snapshot captures the status of the entire colorstore, making its elements available to the Prinergy workflow. Prinergy can only access ColorFlow color control elements that have been captured in a snapshot.
The snapshots feature makes it unnecessary for you to manually save and name multiple versions of individual color control elements after creating and adjusting them. When you capture a snapshot, the current state of all color control elements in all color setups are captured and made available in Prinergy. At any time, you can revert to the state of a previous snapshot. When you revert to a previous snapshot, all color setups are restored to their state at the time the previous snapshot was captured. Any color control elements and color setups that you created after the snapshot that you revert to are deleted.
Important: Since snapshots capture the entire colorstore instead of individual color setups, when you approve or revert a snapshot, multiple color setups may be affected.
You specify a snapshot in the refine process template or output process templates in Prinergy. By default, the Approved snapshot is used for all Prinergy jobs. If you are creating a Prinergy job for testing or for setting up the color on a device for the first time, you may want to select a snapshot that you captured after the Approved snapshot, in order to test the output. During testing, it is best practice to capture a snapshot after each change you make in order to easily identify the result of your changes.
When you are satisfied with the color control elements in all color setups, you can capture a snapshot and approve it. Only one snapshot can be in the Approved state at any time. When you approve a snapshot, any snapshots taken before the snapshot that you approve are deleted.
How Prinergy uses ColorFlow elements
A color setup must be defined in the job attributes of a Prinergy job in order for ColorFlow generated elements to be applied correctly in job processing.
In Prinergy Workflow Packaging Automation Expansion Pack, you can set job attributes when you create a job, or afterwards, from the Edit menu in Prinergy Job Manager. After you assign a color setup to a Prinergy job, the ColorFlow server provides all of the necessary color control elements for the job. If you need to change the color setup of a job from the color setup that is assigned in the job attributes during the refine stage, you can select a new color setup in the refine process template.