Datacolor: Working in the name of color for 38 years

We have it driven into us from childhood, "red for stop, green for go". We have eye-catching, bright red fire trucks, neon-orange traffic cones, and without fail, the glowing yellow "M" by the freeway tells us where to find the next drive-through of that well-known fast food chain. Put simply, color plays an essential everyday role in nonverbal communication.

In photography and video technology, color serves as an information medium and therefore particular attention is paid to its accurate reproduction. One firm has been producing "Color Management" products for over 30 years, aiming to provide trade, industry and consumers with verifiable color measurement capabilities. We're talking about Datacolor - a 100% Swiss-made enterprise.

Times Square, New York City - these outdoor adverts are an explosion of color.

The big change began when the Swiss firm Eichhof Holding AG began to seek out new areas of business for investment models on behalf of its shareholders, and turned to the color control and management sector - in its infancy at the time - as a potentially profitable new investment area.

Eichhof then took 100% control of Datacolor AG and resolved to change the face of color management with its newly acquired firm. Since it specialized only in the textile and clothing industries, it wasn't long before Datacolor AG - financed of course by Eichhof Holding AG - started to buy up other businesses in the color control sector.

Among these was Applied Color Systems (ACS), which specialized in color monitoring during manufacture of paints and plastics, and was acquired in 1989 from US-company Armstrong World Industries Inc., as well as the English firm Instrumental Colour Systems (ICS) in 1990 - this was intended to be an extension of Datacolor AG in the textile and clothing business.

At the end of the 1990s, Eichhof decided to relocate Datacolor AG's headquarters from Zurich, Switzerland to Lawrenceville, New Jersey. A process then began of buying-up other color management firms, specializing in a variety of areas. Over a period of around 20 years, the first of two main business areas that define the modern Datacolor AG was created: The Industrial Business Unit.

Today, this generates the lion's share of the firm's gross turnover, and is divided into three areas as follows: Firstly, clothing and textiles in keeping with the firm's origins. Secondly: Paints, plastics, lacquers and packaging materials. Thirdly comes its automotive operation, which works on fitting out automobile interiors. The latter two business areas center largely on products for critical monitoring processes. These include surface analysis (for definition of surface colors), precise formulation to identify single target color tones, and processes to ensure the accurate reproduction of colors that are, for example, essential for brand recognition.

* Datacolor AG has had a number of different names in the past: ACS/Datacolor, ACS/Datacolor/ICS, Datacolor International; the Colorvision brand was incorporated into Datacolor in late 2007.

Datacolor AG's headquarters in Lawrenceville - the Swiss flag flying in the state of New Jersey, USA.

Acquiring Colorvision in the year 2000, Datacolor laid the foundations for its second main area of business, its so-called Consumer Business Unit. This unit was responsible for producing and marketing specialized initial products for photo studios and professional and semiprofessional photographers, as well as well-equipped hobbyists.

At the core of this are combined software and hardware solutions that allow calibration of printers and monitors. These should make it possible to match a printer's output to the image displayed on the screen, where it has been judged to look "good" - and thereby retain the artistic quality of the original photograph.

In the meantime, with its Spyder3 sensor, Datacolor has reached its third generation of sensors, and these now find use in a variety of product solutions as well as in the digital imaging and home entertainment sectors. It's exactly these products from the home entertainment field that are the focus of this article, since they provide - both as a basic solution and in professional calibration - optimization of picture quality for a variety of applications. We will be talking specifically about the Spyder3TV and ColorFacts Professional 7.5.

True, although its area of work has changed somewhat since then. Where Datacolor began by specializing exclusively in color monitoring for the textile and clothing industries, the Datacolor AG of today is a conglomerate with 330 employees in 25 countries, making it one of the largest companies in the color management sector. One of Datacolor's slogans goes "Calibrate. Then Celebrate." Who knows? If Datacolor can make the step into its regained freedom, then there is indeed a reason to celebrate.

For movie-buffs, in any case, Spyder3 and ColorFacts Professional 7.5 are definitely cause for celebration, as they can now finally see movies exactly as the director and producer had intended.