SAN RAFAEL, CA - Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has purchased FilmLight's Truelight color management system, which will allow users to better understand how colors and tones will be reproduced in a final project, even if their desktop monitors do not have the range to display them. The system provides a full simulation of the entire workflow from digital data to the final projected image. By characterizing each stage in the typical workflow, the closest possible match between preview and final image can be achieved.
Cliff Plumer, ILM's chief technology officer, explains, "Matching an image on a digital artist's desktop monitor to the same image projected on a large screen has always been a challenge. Processing film for quality assurance is time consuming and expensive. Truelight essentially makes your computer monitor look like projected film. When you know that what you see on the screen is what you're going to get in the final project, the turnaround time on production is much faster."
ILM had been developing a second-generation color calibration system of its own, in-house, when ILM senior software engineer, Neil Robinson, saw Truelight. The studio served as a Truelight beta tester in the US, and then purchased FilmLight's HD/SDI hardware along with the integrated Truelight software.