[Openicc] GIMP color management

[Graeme Gill]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> I agree with your color management summary text except for the above. In 
> the open source world, there are currently *many* libraries and 
> applications which support the above features, except that they lack 
> coherent color management.  Due to the (usually) friendly and 
> cooperative anarchy which is the open source movement, it can be 
> expected that there will continue to be many independent image 
> processing, rendering, and printing environments.  The best we can hope 
> for is a an application agnostic framework or library which can be used 
> to enhance existing rendering environments with color management.  Even 
> if this is not achieved, a standard of operation and a standard way to 
> install color profiles and describe the local color management 
> intentions/process would be a great benefit to the community. A 
> compliance test suite (inputs and expected output) would also be a benefit.

It's interesting to speculate on what is motivating Microsoft to invest in
re-invigorating it's color architecture. One of the big drivers in personal
computing and other popular consumer platforms is media. Digital cameras
in particular are driving this segment hard. People want to take photos,
distribute them, put them in documents, and print them. The availability
of cheap color printing is also driving increased use of color savvy applications
in the business and presentation areas. Apple has had the cache of being
the "creative" platform of choice. Microsoft made a half hearted attempt
at making a change in this perception with it adding ICM2.0 to MSWindows,
but it didn't really change anything. WCA is another attempt. I would
guess that it's partly motivated by the fact that selling operating system
software and office suites is not a growing area, whereas consumer
digital media is rapidly growing.

Where does Linux and other open software alternatives fit in the picture ?
The current answer seems to be that, frankly, they don't fit in anywhere.
As a desktop platform Linux et al is a fringe player. Just look at the sort
of support linux gets (or rather doesn't get) in such basics as graphics
card hardware interface docs/drivers. What sort of effort printer manufacturers
put into providing MSWindows and OSX Drivers, compared to how many drivers
or printer interface information is available to Linux. If Linux was perceived
as an important platform for this segment, they would be busy funding
further development, the way that the server segment is supporting
things like kernel development.

Of course it's all a catch22 type of thing, because few important applications
run on Linux, there is little support. Because there is little support,
there are few important applications.

I would suspect that without a reasonably well architected, well supported
color & graphics infrastructure, Linux (and other open operating systems)
will find themselves even more firmly slotted into the "server only" segment,
with Apple being one, and Microsoft two, jumps ahead.

Graeme Gill.