New: CIELab HLC Colour Atlas XL – freeColour.org

Complete Download of HLC Colour Atlas files here

PDF master file with detailed explanations of the color atlas and color system as well as 9 PDF layers with a perfect visualization of different color spaces such as CIELAB, output color space of the printed HLC color atlas, ISOCoatedV2, PSOCoatedV3, PSOUncoatedV3, sRGB etc. You can download the (german) PDF file free of charge here.

Digital HLC-library for Adobe Photoshop and InDesign in .ase-format: The LAB colour library of the HLC colour atlas can be used directly in Adobe Creative Cloud applications. You can download the ASE file free of charge here.

HLC Master Spectral Data: All spectral data of the printed HLC Colour Atlas in CxF3 format, compatible with current colour formulation systems. Creative Commons license allows the HLC spectral data to be integrated into your systems and referenced in communication with customers free of charge by color manufacturers and formulators. Spectral data is a key technology for high-quality digital color management of spot colors. The Creative Commons license allows ink manufacturers to generate HLC Dependent Standards to provide designers, prepress and producers with customized spectral data for specific printing processes, color series or types of substrates. Since the HLC Master spectral data was generated directly in the production of the HLC Colour Atlas, it is ensured that each HLC Colour Atlas automatically represents a physical sample of the HLC Master Spectral Data. You can download the CxF file for free here.

Tabular HLC color field conversions in sRGB and CMYK ISOCoatedV2 in the versions "relative colorimetric" and "absolut colorimetric" via Adobe Photoshop". You can download the CSV file free of charge here.

Tabular measurement report of all colours of the current HLC colour atlas version with reference LAB, measured LAB and deviation in Delta-E-2000. The XLS file can be downloaded free of charge here.

Ring binder HLC colour atlas as printed master reference for colour matching, colour measurement and colour communication. DIN A4 ring binder with 25 pages of colour plates and explanations on 250gr/sqm GMG Premium Proofing Paper Semi-Mat and individual test report on the last page of each atlas. Only for the printed ring binder we charge a contribution towards expenses of EUR 99, - for the introductory price until 31.03.2018, then EUR 149, - plus VAT and shipping.

freieFarbe (freeColour) e. V. is an association of German and Swiss colour professionals. Since 2016, FreieFarbe has been registered as a non-profit association under German law.

freeColour would like to give tips and hints on how to create a consistent colour in all areas of application and is based on open standards that have been integrated in the computer for a long time and want to show: the computer is an ideal tool for colour, it can make colour free!

freiFarbe e. V. does not pursue any commercial goals, but would like to promote colour communication and encourage the use of colour to:

• make color calculable
• make colour infinitely variable
• make ink and colour systems comparable
• simplify color communication
• without licensing costs
• give tips and best practices on cross-media color workflows
• makt the multiple mysteries of color understandable

In short: free colour from shackles! There are many good approaches for this. freiFarbe e. V. would like to initiate an open and constructive dialogue of the possibilities, everybody can participate in this.

Vision for the future

Today we still live in a world of colours where many paint companies cook their own, strictly guarded soup. Façade paints do not speak to wall paints, wall paints do not speak to lacquer paints, lacquer paints do not to printing inks, printing inks do not to textile printing inks, and all of them do not speak to the computer as a central tool for painters, designers and creative artists. 
It is difficult for us as FreieFarbe e. V. to understand why hundreds of proprietary systems exist, especially with such a central topic as color and color communication, where colour systems cannot and do not want to communicate with each other and are kept away from transparent color models and open, free of charge standards.

We as FreieFarbe e. V. have the very simple vision that in the near future creative people, designers, color manufacturers, printers, product manufacturers and many more will be able to speak a common color language in a transparent, open and royalty-free way. We want the free HLC colours to be freely variable and usefully supplemented by means of precisely displaying software, and that the corresponding colour shades are available as varnish, on textiles, as powder coating, film, facade colour and much more, and can be ordered simply and directly. That every color, even in-between colors, will be available online, in the ink store, in the print shop, in the DIY store, etc. and can be printed on a printer at home and in the office. And if this should not be possible, for example, because the colour is out of gamut of the printing system, transparent and open communication about what is possible and feasible for all parties is easily possible. 
This is what we are committed to. 

freieFarbe e. V.
Grünteweg 31
26127 Oldenburg
www.freecolour.org

The Colour Atlas XL is available for free download. What do I need the printed version for?

The printed colour atlas contains exactly the same information as the PDF file with the colour gamut of the "EPSON SC-Px000V series, semimatt without optical brighteners" plus a final page with a UGRA/Fogra media wedge with individual test report for quality assurance. The printed colour atlas XL is excellently suited for colour matching and colour determination in highest precision. If you would like to sample colors, define color references and check them against a very precisely printed reference, then the printed color atlas is ideal for you. 

I chose colours for a design in the Colour Atlas XL. How can I best use and pass on the colour values?

In our download area, you can download an Adobe Swatch Exchange file with all the color fields shown in the standard atlas in CIELAB and integrate it directly into your Adobe program palette and work with it in a media-neutral way. (Note: For the CIELAB HLC color atlas XL we did without an Adobe Swatch Exchange file due to the number of 13,283 color fields, the colours should have been distributed to several files, and the loading time of such a file would have taken very long. However, you can easily create your desired colour fields in InDesign etc. at any time using the printed LAB values.) You can use it from Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign to generate customized CMYK or RGB values for print or Internet in your output colour space directly during export. If the colours are outside your printable colour space, or if you want to use the colours as spot colours, you can inform your print shop about the chosen HLC colours or corresponding CIELAB colours as a reference. Many well-known printing ink manufacturers can mix inks on the basis of these values. In addition, in the download area you can also access the spectral data of the colour fields for all color fields of the colour atlas, which represent the most precise definition of a colour at the moment. These values can also be used by ink manufacturers to mix colour formulations that accurately reproduce this colour tone.

What are the spectral data of the color atlas suitable for?

The spectral data correspond to the printed fields of the color atlas and can be read, processed and used directly by software solutions such as InkFormulation. InkFormulation is a software for the fast, precise and constant creation, storage, release and reuse of color formulations for offset, flexo, gravure and screen printing. Based on these spectral data, ink manufacturers can produce precise color formulations taking into account the substrate ink. This means that these data are not only suitable for the formulation of classic printing processes, but can also be used for varnish inks, screen printing, pad printing, textile printing and much more. 
Even if your print shop is located in a foreign country and does not have the free colour HLC colour atlas, it can download the colour atlas PDF, the CIELAB nominal/actual value table and the spectral data of all colour fields free of charge at any time and then - apart from the printed visual reference - has all the details you can only wish for in terms of colour formulation and colour rendering. As the data are available in German and English, the data is accepted worldwide.  

Couldn't the HLC colour atlas XL be produced cheaper?

freieFarbe e. V. is a non-profit association that works without profit making intentions. All Atlas contributing mebers provided their time free of charge, even though the development of the Atlas took a year to complete. All components of the CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas are available for free download as PDF files etc. and are protected under Creative Commons. They can also be reproduced and distributed free of charge in the commercial environment, provided that the author and the license are named. (All data is released under the CC-BY-ND-4.0 license. The full text can be found at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcode.de).
For the printed version, however, there are costs that we are not able to cover as an association, such as printing and production of the ring binder, proofs of 75 pages DIN A4+, purchase and use of printers, pigment inks, invoicing, accounting etc.. Also for the cutting, finishing and shipping of the atlas there are labour costs for the employees of Proof GmbH. Only these costs are included in the printed version of the HLC colour atlas in as small a scale as possible.

There are hundreds of colour systems already? What's the point of another one?

That's why. Because the vast majority of these numerous color systems are manufacturer-bound, subject to licensing and with their color information almost "secretive". Try to match the colour of your windows with your façade colour and the colour of your interior. Ask the DIY store for the Adobe-RGB values of the facade paint fan, because you want to simulate the colour tone in advance in Photoshop on a photo of the building. 
Brand owners and companies with many suppliers of coloured products end up with hundreds of colour fans that need to be kept up to date and cannot communicate with each other. 
This deplorable state of affairs drives us from FreieFarbe e. V.. We want to communicate cross-media, open, precise and without licensing costs. 

How can I determine colour harmonies with the HLC Colour Atlas XL?

In the HLC model, relationships between colours - such as complementary colours or harmonies - can be seen at a glance. This is a great help in colour design.

Complementary colours are opposite to each other in the color circle, i. e. they have a 180-differentiated
H-value, where L and C remain the same. Example: Yellow (H = 90) and blue (H = 270). Complementary colours hold the maximum tension of two equally strong opposing poles, which cancel each other out.

The brightness variation describes colours with the same H and C values, whereby only the L-value changes. This can be done in any number of steps. 

The dark to light development shows a basic colour in constant strong, calm variation.

On the other hand, the saturation variation (H and L remain the same, C is varied between two colors) with the basic statement of a hue from weak to strong.

An H-transition with constant angle difference and constant brightness and saturation creates a multicolored transition between two output colors. In the opposite direction with the larger angle difference a larger step width results, or with the same angle difference more intermediate colours are covered.

Finally, with simultaneous variation of two or three of the HLC parameters, many other color harmonies can be found. Logarithmic instead of linearly graduated variations, there is more drama. Uneven n-corner, skewed planes, screws, spirals etc. in the color space result in many other interesting and lively effects.

In harmonic calculations, the perceptual and freely calculable definition of the CIELAB color space is a decisive quality advantage over other color models.

The ordering process for a HLC spot colour

In order to mix a HLC spot color, the color supplier requires the HLC spectral data. As a rule, a design studio commissions a print shop for printing with spot colors, and the print shop orders spot colors from its ink supplier.

When the design studio commissions the print shop, we recommend the following:

"Ladies and gentlemen,

The print job ABC contains the spot color Hxxx_Lyyyy_Czzz with the color coordinates L xx a xx b zz from the HLC color system (see www.freiefarbe.de/HLC-System). The exact specifications for the recipe of the colour tone can be found in the attached file fF_HLC_semimatt_spektral_M0_v1. cxf Please forward this file to your colour supplier. "

Information for ink manufacturers

The association FreieFarbe e. V. provides the general public with an open colour system at www.freiefarbe.de/HLC-System Available for free download are color palettes for the Adobe Creative Cloud and other applications as well as a spectral color library in CxF format for use in commercial ink formulation solutions.
A physical and visual reference of the HLC colour system is the "CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL".

Here are some tips for working with the spectral color library fF_HLC_semimatt_spektral_M0_v1. cxf in the program X-Rite InkFormulation:
As the name of the file already indicates, you need an M0 assortment of your basic colours for the recipe. At the beginning of the recipe, load the file in the menu item CxF. Now all 13.283 colours of the HLC system are available.

The filter function of the CxF menu allows you to make a preselection of colors. For example, entering H240 shows you all blue tones of color type H240, entering H240_L55 shows you all blue tones with the brightness L55.
Entering the complete HLC name then only directly displays the CxF file for formulation.
You can proceed as usual to create the recipe and mix the colour.

Authors

The following persons of FreieFarbe e. V. have contributed to this colour atlas:

• Matthias Betz (Proof GmbH) http://www.proof.de
• Holger Everding (DTP Studio Oldenburg) http://dtpstudio.de
• Jan-Peter Homann (Homann Colormanagement) http://www.colormanagement.de
• Peter Jäger (pre2media) http://www.pre2media.ch
• Eric A. Soder (polygrafix / pixsource) http://polygrafix.ch
• and Christoph Schäfer and Gregory Pittman (Scribus) https://www.scribus.net

Thanks

For the support by software, inks and paper we thank the

• ColorLogic GmbH http://colorlogic.de
• Epson Deutschland GmbH http://epson.de
• GMG GmbH & Co. KG http://gmgcolor.com

A few days ago, our DIN SPEC 16699 "Open Colour Communication" was published and is now available for free download from DIN at Beuth-Verlag.

Matthias Betz from Proof GmbH, Holger Everding from DTP Studio Oldenburg, Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin and Eric. A Soder from Pixsource in Switzerland, all members of the association freieFarbe e.V. (https://www.freiefarbe.de), have shown in the bilingual DIN specification a way to create high-precision color samples based on open source, license-free standards and shown ways for cross-media color communication.

The 44-page PDF is bilingual in German and English and can be ordered directly from Beuth Verlag, which distributes the DIN standards in Germany, and downloaded free of charge after a short registration.

DIN SPEC 16699 Offene Farbkommunikation / Open Colour Communication