Windows Color System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:04, 8 March 2007

Revision as of 03:09, 23 April 2007

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{{Windows Vista}}

'''Windows Color System (WCS)'''<ref>[http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/color/WCS.mspx Windows Color System]</ref> is a platform for [[color management]] exclusive to Windows Vista, that strives to achieve color consistency across various software and hardware, including cameras, monitors, printers and scanners. Different devices interpret the same colors differently, according to their software and hardware configurations. As a result, they must be properly calibrated to reproduce colors consistently across different devices. WCS aims to make this process of color calibration automatic and transparent, as an evolution of ICC Color Profiles.

Windows Color System features a completely redesigned ''Color Infrastructure and Translation Engine'' (CITE) at its core. It is backed up by an enhanced color processing pipeline that supports bit-depths more than 32 bits per pixel, multiple color channels (more than 3), alternative color spaces and high dynamic range coloring, using a technology named ''Kyuanos''<ref>[http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Windows-Vista-to-use-Canon-Color-Management-.htm Windows Vista to use Canon software]</ref> developed by [[Canon Inc.|Canon]]. The color processing pipeline allows device developers to add their own [[gamut]] mapping algorithm into the pipeline to customize the color response of the device. The new pipeline also supports floating point calculations to minimize round-off losses, which are inherent in integer processing. Once the color pipeline finishes processing the colors, the CITE engine applies a ''color transform'' according to a color profile, specific to a device to ensure the output color matches to what is expected.