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SGI unveils color-management tool

Silicon Graphics promises to deliver the Web in all its technicolor glory with a new color-management program called Cosmo Color.

CNET News staff
Silicon Graphics promises to deliver the Web in all its technicolor glory with a new color-management program called Cosmo Color.

The program, which was announced today at the Seybold Seminar in Boston, allows Web servers to peek into a user's monitor, identify its color characteristics, and then deliver Web pages that are fine-tuned to the monitor's color capabilites. Cosmo Color includes client software that analyzes a user's monitor and then works with a Java-enabled Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator 2.0 or HotJava, to dispatch the monitor profile to a Web server. Cosmo Color is designed to work with WebForce, SGI's hardware/software server technology.

With Cosmo Color, SGI is hoping to attract online catalogs and stock photography libraries that deliver color-sensitive content to users. But some industry observers remain skeptical that Web users will demand such a high degree of accuracy through their Web browsers.

"I don't buy the notion that I will be looking at such color-critical stuff through Netscape," said Stephan Somogyi, senior editor at Digital Media, an industry newsletter based in San Francisco. "If you care about the level of color fidelity that much, you shoudn't be using the Web as your delivery medium. If someone cares that much, they'll use Photoshop."

A demonstration of Cosmo Color will be availble on SGI's Web site beginning in March.