ColorThink Pro - Common Questions
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ColorThink Pro Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Profile Manager
- Profile Inspector & Renamer
- Profile Medic
- Grapher
- The Color Worksheet (part 1), (part 2)
- ColorSmarts Guide
- Preferences
- FAQ's
- Recommended Reading
Here is a collection of the more popular questions that are asked concerning ColorThink Pro.
The image's selected colors do not convert
- Question
When adding an image to a worksheet, I extracted all unique colors, then graphed the list. Everything good so far, but when I select 'vectors' and choose an ICC profile, the graph displays nothing. Is this a bug, or am I misunderstanding something?
- Answer
This issue stems from how the Worksheet handles conversions. When a profile is added to an image with selected colors, only the image data is converted by the profile. The selected color list is left alone.
For what you are trying to do, the solution is easy. After making your selected colors list, choose "Use as Primary Data Source" in the 1st column's color list PRIOR to applying profiles or graphing, and the color numbers will be converted correctly.
Why won't the Grapher graph my Device Link profile?
With a device link profile, there is technically no gamut because DL's represent a direct connection between color spaces. However, you can use ColorThink Pro to view the results of a device link profile:
Here is a step by step colorwiki guide:
http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/ColorThink_Device_Link_Tip
Here is a YouTube video looking at ways to view the results of a device link profile in the Grapher:
https://youtu.be/ghysZNe-4w4
Why doesn't the Grapher reflect the non-D50 white point of my monitor profile?
In trying to understand this, it can be useful to use working space profiles like AdobeRGB (6600 K) and ProphotoRGB (5000 K) because they demonstrate that even commonly used profiles like these have different white points and yet work just fine in most cases.
ColorThink Pro defaults to showing you in the Grapher a monitor profile using the Rel Col. rendering intent.
This makes sense because when we look at a display, our eyes naturally interpret the white as normal, regardless of what color is actually there. Our eyes adapt to D65 as well as they can adapt to D50. When you want to compare a display to a printer gamut, this gives the user what they are in most cases looking for - a comparison between the outer boundaries of their printer profile, with their monitor profile based on what their eyes see as white in the display.
The user has the option in CTP to change the rendering intent to something else like Abs. Col. and then with AdobeRGB you can see the gamut white point shift over to the blue D66. But since CTP is showing the proofing direction of the profile, this really does not make practical sense. We really don’t recommend messing with these controls unless you really know what you’re looking at. There’s more information in the manual: http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/ColorThink_Pro_-_Grapher#Device_Gamut
Why can't I find all the windows I should have in ColorThink Pro?
Individual window placement (like on a second monitor) is saved in the "preferences" file in your computer. The easiest way to resolve this is to delete your preferences file and create it afresh. NOTE: You will be asked to enter in your ColorThink username and serial number, so make sure you have this information before you start.
1. Make sure ColorThink is closed (not running)
2. Find the preferences file:
- Mac: Mac HD>(user)>Library>Preferences> Chromix ColorThink>Chromix ColorThink2 Pro Prefs
- Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\CHROMiX\ColorThink\Chromix ColorThink2 Pro Prefs
3. Delete the prefs file
4. Start the app again
5. Enter in your username and serial number.
Your window sizes and locations will all be reset to their placements when the app was first launched.
Why does it take so long for the Grapher to show my images?
Is it normal for the program to take 30-45 seconds to open an image photo file in the 3D module?
Our more “consumer-level” version of ColorThink (ColorThink 2) will automatically scale down images that are imported into the Grapher. The ColorThink Pro version is intended for those who want a more precise rendering of where the pixels lie - so for most image types, the software will attempt to process the 3D location of every pixel in your image. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you down-sample large images before bringing them into the ColorThink Pro Grapher. To get an idea of the gamut of an image, you really don’t need a large number of pixels to do that.
A common procedure for those who use the software a lot is:
- Bring the image into the Worksheet first (where the image is downsampled),
- Choose “extract unique color values” to create a list of colors in the image that are representative of the image, without duplicates,
- Under the heading of that color list, choose "Graph list" to move the list to the 3D Grapher.
For more information: http://www.colorwiki.com/wiki/Graphing_Large_Images