Barco Creator was an image manipulation program targeted at the repro and print shop markets. It was developed by Barco Creative Systems a division of the Barco Group and first shown as a prototype at Parigraph in April 1988, then later at Ipex 88"Ipex series tracks image manipulation. (highlights of the 1998 Ipex series of international shows)." Graphic Arts Monthly. Reed Business Information, Inc. (US). 1998. ). Barco Creative Systems together with D.I.S.C. and Aesthedes merged into Barco Graphics. It ran on several generations of

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

computers till the late 1990s. Barco Graphics (later Esko) ColorTone for

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

is considered its successor.

History

Until the late 1980s, digital retouching required specialized hardware such as the

Quantel Quantel was a company based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1973 that designed and manufactured Digital data, digital production equipment for the Broadcasting, broadcast television, video production and motion picture industries. It was ...

Paintbox. Barco Creator was one of the first products to run on off-the-shelf SGI workstations instead. Originally targeted at the "high end", Creator evolved into a slightly more mid-market program with the "personal"-edition running on the Indy. Still the price was in the $10k to $100k range depending on options, and additional hardware was sometimes needed to speed up specific operations. While Creator could rely on superior features and performance to justify its price through the mid-1990s, as time progressed each new

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

version made the Barco package harder to sell. After the release of version 7.1 in late 1997 there were few new sales. In the end Creator was abandoned, like many of its contemporaries; Dalim Tango, Linotype-Hell DaVinci and Alias Eclipse. Its lineal successor, known as Esko ColorTone was discontinued in 2013.

Features

Software modules

Creator was set up to be a modular system, tailored to the specific needs of each "shop" or user. The base for version 7.0 was the "CT-Brix"

software library In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

(colour selection, basic

compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing ...

, selection, transformation,

shape A shape is a graphics, graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external Surface (mathematics), surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, Surface texture, texture, or material ...

s, basic

colour correction Color correction is a process used in stage lighting, photography, television, cinematography, and other disciplines, which uses color gels, or filters, to alter the overall color of the light. Typically the light color is measured on a scale kno ...

densitometer A densitometer is a device that measures the degree of darkness (the optical density) of a photographic or semitransparent material or of a reflecting surface. The densitometer is basically a light source aimed at a photoelectric cell. It deter ...

, layers etc.), also featured in other Barco Graphics CT (continuous tone) products, e.g. ColorTone. On top of this Creator added the "Creative functions" libraries (special effect filters;

mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

emboss EMBOSS is a free c software analysis package developed for the needs of the molecular biology and bioinformatics user community. The software automatically copes with data in a variety of formats and even allows transparent retrieval of sequence ...

, b/w, warp etc.), "basic brush" module (size, thickness, shapes, styles, pressure sensitivity), "advanced brush" module (brush profiles,

texture Texture may refer to: Science and technology * Image texture, the spatial arrangement of color or intensities in an image * Surface texture, the smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object * Texture (roads), road surface c ...

s), "basic colour correction" module (gradation correction, pick mixer, plane mixer, colour mixer), "advanced colour correction" module (chain all of the basic correction tools, batch corrections, instant preview) and finally the "auto mask" module. Optional software modules included "PrintView" (preview a given

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

printing process), "BlackSmith" (modify CMYK files to reduce ink usage, better print quality) and "InkSwitch" (convert CMYK into special ink separations for

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

printing). Barco ColorTone adds an "Image quality estimator" module (evaluate if an image is printable according to certain quality parameters), but lacks several of the other Creator modules. Using the "Brix Organizer" software it was possible to group CT-Brix modules into "sessions" customised for the current workflow. One could for example disable both colour correction and the creative functions/filters, giving the operator an interface more focused on painting.

File formats

As of Barco Creator 7 support for foreign (non-Barco)

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

s depended on a dedicated software "interface". Interfaces for Creator CVW files,

TIFF Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is w ...

, PSD (no layers) and EPS/DCS were standard. Optionally one could order interfaces for Hell and Scitex and Scitex online file formats.

Output

For the earlier versions, at least, the primary output were CT

RGB The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green, and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three ...

(

Scitex CT Scitex Continuous Tone or Scitex CT is an image file format. It is designed specifically for use on Scitex graphics processing equipment. Its use is supported by numerous graphics suites and desktop publishing packages, such as Adobe Photoshop, Ado ...

to be exposed on film recorders as LVT and Fire 1000) and CMYK formats (to

Scitex Suny Cellular Communication was known as Scitex Corporation Ltd. until December 2005 and Scailex Corporation Ltd. () until November 2016. History Scitex was an Israel-based multi-national company, founded by Efraim (Efi) Arazi in 1968, and wh ...

Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...

, and IT8). One must keep in mind that the internet was just coming of age, and the whole prepress/magazine industry was almost exclusively based on film photographers and a film workflow.

Development

Hardware

Creator originally ran on Silicon Graphics

Power Series In mathematics, a power series (in one variable) is an infinite series of the form \sum_^\infty a_n \left(x - c\right)^n = a_0 + a_1 (x - c) + a_2 (x - c)^2 + \dots where ''a_n'' represents the coefficient of the ''n''th term and ''c'' is a co ...

computers with one or more processors. By 1993 "Personal Creator" was available for the

Indigo InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...

, while the "full" Power Creator ran on a

Crimson Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, '' Kermes vermilio'', but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red col ...

. Later releases were available for the

Indy Indy may refer to: Computing and technology *Indy (software), used for Internet access to music *Internet Direct, or "Indy", a software library * SGI Indy, a computer workstation Periodicals *''The Indy'', shorthand for newspapers that include ...

Indigo2 The O2 (formerly known as the Millennium Dome) is a large entertainment district on the Greenwich peninsula in South East London, England, including an indoor arena, a music club, a Cineworld cinema, an exhibition space, piazzas, bars, resta ...

, 02 and

Octane Octane is a hydrocarbon and also an alkane with the chemical formula C8H18, and the condensed structural formula CH3(CH2)6CH3. Octane has many structural isomers that differ by the location of branching in the carbon chain. One of these isomers ...

computers. It is unknown if Creator will run on the later Octane2,

Fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

and Tezro workstations with VPro graphics. Due to its

high end In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good (economics), good for which demand (economics), demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a more significant proportion of ove ...

focus Barco developed several dedicated hardware options to speed up Creator. For the Power Series and Crimson Barco originally supplied a "Colcom/ VME" colour computer board, a fast multi-dimensional interpolator. This was replaced in early 1993 with the more powerful "Chameleon" board, integrating the discrete logic of the Colcom board in a custom

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

. Its main purpose was displaying CMYK colours on the (

) monitor quickly. After version 7.0 the Chameleon was also used for accelerating certain colour correction operations. For the release of Creator 6 Barco also added a Brush-accelerator board that made retouching with large brushes on files of several hundred megabytes possible.

Turnkey A turnkey, a turnkey project, or a turnkey operation (also spelled turn-key) is a type of project that is constructed so that it can be sold to any buyer as a completed product. This is contrasted with build to order, where the constructor builds ...

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

s were additionally supplied with a

WACOM is a Japanese company headquartered in Kazo, Saitama, Japan, that specializes in manufacturing graphics tablets and related products. As of 2012 Wacom generated sales of approximately 40.7 billion yen with 785 employees. The company's shares ...

tablet, a Barco Reference Calibrator self-calibrating or Personal Calibrator monitor and

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

RAID RAID (; redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical Computer data storage, data storage components into one or more logical units for th ...

storage, though stripped down versions were also available. Input was usually from high-end scanners: Linotype-Hell,

Crosfield Electronics Crosfield Electronics was a British electronics imaging company founded by John Crosfield (1915 – 2012) and Dennis Bent in 1947 to produce process imaging devices for the print industry. The firm was notable for its innovation in colour drum ...

Dainippon Screen is a Japanese semiconductor and electronics company, headquartered in Kyoto, engaged in the manufacture and sale of equipment for the manufacturing of semiconductors, flat panel displays, storage media (such as optical discs) and precision ...

, or ICG (Itek Color Graphics). From the Indigo/Crimson versions the Howtek D4000 ( 4000dpi)

drum scanner Drum scanners are a type of image scanner that capture image information with photomultiplier, photomultiplier tubes (PMT), rather than the charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays found in flatbed scanners and inexpensive film scanners. "Reflective an ...

was usually offered as an option. Version 7 supported both the D4000 and the D7500 ( 5000dpi) scanner.

Release history

The feature set was basically frozen after Creator 7 (June 1996). The most apt comparison to the final release, featurewise, would be Adobe Photoshop 4 (November 1996).

Availability

Barco Creator was discontinued in the late 1990s, and was not picked up by Purup-Eskofot after it purchased the Graphics division of Barco. Neither Barco nor Esko have the ability to issue new

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another part ...

s anymore. As Creator was only available in single nodelocked licenses, one would need to buy an original system with the license included to have a "full legal version".

References

{{Raster graphics editors Barco Graphics software Raster graphics editors IRIX software Technical communication tools