Colour-Science Q-Producer

 

 

 

Introduction                                            Q-producer presentation (PDF 9Mb) >>>

 

Quality monitoring systems are well established in the traditional photo processing industry. In the rapidly growing field of digital image processing there is, in many cases, no systematic quality monitoring and control of the digital production. This could lead to quality problems, resulting in a loss of future business and increased costs due to waste and re-makes.

 

In a digital processing environment it is imperative to monitor all elements in the production chain, since the weakest element impacts the quality of the final image. Monitoring the quality, not only implies looking at the image quality, but also monitoring all of the necessary system, service, maintenance and backup tasks having a direct or indirect impact on the quality.

 

Suppose a line is brought down because the high speed scanning system’s disk runs out of space. This “lines down” situation could have been  avoided by monitoring the disk space. In the case of a disk crash with no up-to-date backups available, it could take hours to bring production back under control. Another example of a quality failure is when a customer complaint is received  about  bad colors just because of dirt in the exposure path.

 

The Q-producer program suite is the first completely new developed system to address all of these issues by offering comprehensive functionality to each of the production tasks and steps.

 

 

Q-producer is of a modular design. The various modules can be used single or in any combination:

 

·         Q-monitor: Unique monitor calibration methods assure that images on all monitors used for image inspection and corrections look the same, thus avoiding wrong color corrections and waste. Periodic color consistency checks give an early warning if monitors drift away, or if the settings have been changed by mistake. For color management applications or for printer proofing, Q-monitor supports the creation of monitor profiles.

 

·         Q-scan, Q-print : Task and backup schedulers assure stable production avoiding production break downs due to scanner and printer problems. Periodic color consistency checks based on Colour-Science test charts tell the operator whether production can go on or whether a device needs to be re-checked first.
Included in both modules are ICC profile creation functions, which allow a seamless integration with Q-enhancer, Colour-Science’s image enhancement system. The profile creation process is fully automated, including light distribution checks prior to profile creation, thus avoiding the use of bad profiles.

 

·         Q-process: The monitoring of film and paper processors based on traditional test strips is one of the well-established tasks in a lab. Q-process includes many of the popular features of the well-known Fuji Hunt’s OASIS quality monitoring system. In addition, a task scheduler has been included assuring that all of the necessary service and maintenance tasks are properly executed in time.

 

·         Q-master: This module represents the “control room” for the whole system. At any time the lab manager has a full overview of his/her operation. He/she can check the results of the color consistency tests of the monitors, scanners and printers; the chemistry tests of the processors in various ways, and can check if the maintenance, service and backup tasks have been properly completed.

 

·         Q-producer is based on a server SQL database system,  supports multiple geographical  locations and can be tailored to the specific needs of an organization.

 

Since all test and check results are stored in the database, the history can be viewed at any time (e.g. as line and color balance graphs) for individual devices or for a pair of devices. As an example, test results of processors can be compared against the printer and scanner tests, thus unveiling problem areas on either side.

 

The user friendly interface and a high degree of automation make the system easy to use, even for inexperienced operators.