Focoltone Color Solutions

12 July 2004, Singapore - At the world's largest print industry trade show, Singapore-based KiKUZE Solutions showed users how to produce accurate cyan, magenta, yellow and black colors from digital color copiers and printers with its latest product, the Focoltone Intelligent Color Calibration System (ICCS) 2.0.

Focoltone ICCS was introduced to "more than 394,000 visitors from 122 countries and 3,350 journalists from 82 countries" who visited drupa from 6 to 19 May in Düsseldorf Germany. Held every four years, drupa is hailed as the "Olympic Games" of the print industry.

During the show, KiKUZE received more than 70 enquiries from distributor and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for distribution, bundling and licensing deals.

Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of KiKUZE Solutions, is extremely pleased with the results, saying, "The positive response we received was incredibly uplifting for us. We exhibited alongside other world-renowned brands and our made-in-Singapore product managed to generate plenty of interest, proving we are a worthy player on the world stage.

"Focoltone ICCS is specially created for design, graphics and print users who need a very simple and fast solution to calibrate their laser color copiers and printers. Audiences were particularly impressed with how our system negated the need for the complicated gadgetry usually associated with color calibration systems."

Focoltone ICCS enables a high-end color printer's CMYK color output to come close to industry-standard offset press quality, a performance level KiKUZE refers to as Color OK!. The product is retailing for US$899 online.

Entirely conceptualized, designed and developed in Singapore, Focoltone ICCS is an Adobe Photoshop plug-in that incorporates advanced Artificial Intelligence and Negative Color Comparison to detect and correct color variance and contamination in digital printers.

KiKUZE Chief Scientist, Dr. Allan Zhang explains, "Building on our original two patents for Focoltone Color System, a CMYK color specifying guide for printing, and Focoltone Digital, a visual reference chart for color comparison, we added Artificial Intelligence techniques to conduct Negative Color Comparison between the printer's output and the target Focoltone Calibration Chart. Our third patent for Negative Color Comparison is currently pending approval and clearance."

drupa organizers approved KiKUZE's application to be showcased at the drupa innovation parc, touted as the "drupa 2004 think-tank". KiKUZE was the only Asian company exhibiting there.

Focoltone ICCS marks the start of KiKUZE's plans to Color OK! printers all over the world. Future products in development cater to the professional print user and network environments that link multiple printers.