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One of the problems with ICC-based color management is that certain colors get destroyed when you convert from one CMYK color space to another. For example, black-only text and drop shadows always convert to 4-color process black, and pure yellow, magenta and cyan ramps end up with scum dot contamination. This can be a real problem when Lithographers try to give their customers a color-managed digital dot proof (IE Fuji FinalProof, etc.). It is simply unacceptable to show a customer a 4-color black vignette when it was supposed to be black only. And no-one wants to try to register a press with 4-color black text. Unfortunately this issue can not be solved using ICC-Device Profiles -- but there is a solution: ICC-Device Links.

Left Dakota's Link-o-lator 2.02 software turns your ICC profiles into specialty ICC device links that bypass LAB and generate direct CMYK-to-CMYK transformations.

Innovation

While most comparable programs build only rudimentary device links that offer little or no improvement over using only ICC profiles, our innovative and easy-to-use program, Link-o-lator, was specifically engineered to create the most sophisticated, state-of-the-art ICC-device links which are optimized to fix the problems of the prepress and printing industry.

Link Benefits

In addition to all of the benefits of using ICC profiles -- hue-based color correction, automatic dot gain and gray-balance adjustment, etc., Left Dakota specialty ICC device links offer several additional benefits.

You can:

• Preserve up to eight pure color channels.
• Preserve black-only text, blends and drop shadows.
• Preserve contaminant-free cyan, magenta, and yellow.
• Preserve special colors, such as registration black.
• Get more consistent color results, regardless of computing platform --Mac, Windows or Unix.
• Build black point compensation right into the link, producing a better dynamic range on the press & digital/inkjet proofers.

System Requirements: Macintosh Computer running System OS 9,OS 9 Classic, or OS X. ColorSync 3.03 or higher.