ColourTalk - a system for colour communication P A RHODES, S A R SCRIVENER AND M R LUO* Accurate selection, control and reproduction of colour play an increasingly important role in textile design. These processes can be aided through the use of computer technology and colorimetry, allowing colour-critical decisions about a design to be made from the screen. The main benefits of this to industry are reduced costs due to fewer errors and a decreased lead time. A prototype was developed over a 4 month period to demonstrate the feasibility of such a system. Keywords: colour fidelity, computer-aided design, computer graphics display calibration, colour order systems, colour appearance, Hunt-ACAM, WYSIWYG The use of colour in design is becoming more widespread with the development of cheaper and more advanced computer-controlled displays, printing and scanning devices. This increases the expectation of accurate colour reproduction across both similar and dissimilar media. However, the reality is poor colour fidelity and a consequent overhead of manual colour matching at each stage of colour communication. This is frequently very time consuming and reduces confi- dence in making colour-critical decisions based on anything but physical swatches or full mock-ups of the final design. Mistakes or changes made at any stage can be expensive. A project funded by the DTI Information Engineering Advanced Technology Programme (IEATP), entitled 'Colour Appearance Research for Interactive Systems Management and Applications" (CARISMA), was started in February 1990 to study some of these issues. The project is the collaborative effort of the textile manufacturer Coats Viyella, Crosfield Electronics and the LUTCHI Research Centre. One of the project's LUTCHI Research Centre, Department of Computer Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Loughborough, Leicestershire LEll 3TU, UK *Crosfield Electronics Limited, Three Cherry Trees Lane, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire HP2 7RH, UK goals is to produce an exemplar illustrating the results obtained from the research work and it was decided that a system for colour communication in a design environment would be an ideal vehicle. For practical reasons, the research domain was restricted to a subset of the textile design process in which colour plays an important role. After holding an initial series of inter- views with textile designers to gain a better under- standing of their working practices, it was felt that it would be difficult to Predict the exact form of any solution to their problems. Consequently, a prototype system called ColourTalk was devised which was intended to be developed further as a result of user feedback. OVERVIEW The ColourTalk system was designed primarily around the tasks of colour palette creation and communication in a textile environment. Palettes are used by design- ers and colourists to represent the current season's fashion colours in a fixed, communicable form (typically composed of fabric, yarn, thread or printed samples). These palettes are specific to a particular customer and range (e.g. menswear). While ColourTalk was not intended to be a complete CAD system (as these are often highly complex), very basic design facilities are provided. The system also includes tools for the visualization of colour under varying viewing conditions, together with colour measurement Vol 13 No 2 1992 0141-9382/92/020089-08 © 1992 Butterworth-Heinernann Ltd 89