Unlocking Visual Color Lookup with ArgyllCMS and "colo"

ArgyllCMS stands out as a powerful open-source tool designed for the creation and administration of color profiles.

One of its notable features is the spotread utility, which allows you to capture data from individual color patches using your spectrophotometer.

However, a drawback is that it solely provides textual XYZ and LAB values.

Fortunately, a solution exists in the form of the Rust-based colo utility. By integrating the values obtained from ArgyllCMS with "colo" you can generate a compelling visual representation of the specified color.

Imagine being able to see the color come to life as an actual image:

To streamline this process in real-time during scanning, a concise Bash script has been developed:

./spotread -H | while IFS= read -r line; do
    if [[ "$line" == *"D50 Lab:"* ]]; then
	echo $line
        lab_values=$(echo "$line" | awk '{print $9, $10, $11}')
        colo_command="colo show \"Lab $lab_values\""
        echo $colo_command && eval $colo_command
    else
        echo $line
    fi
done