AFP Consortium
The AFP Color Consortium (AFPCC), which was formed in October, 2004 and was focused on developing the AFP Color Management Architecture
Membership Information
Featured AFP News
- AFPC announces new version of AFP - AFP IS/3 interchange set [August 2011]…
- AFP Consortium Incorporates as Standards Body [February 2009]…
- The AFP Color Consortium will now work collaboratively on the entire Advanced Function Presentation architecture [August 2006]…
- Belgian Inventive Designers joins AFP Color Consortium [March 2006]…
- AFP Color Consortium Marks Milestone [January 2006]…
- High Volume Color Printing Advances [January 2006]…
AFPC Member Articles
An OutputLinks Conversation With Harry Lewis
President and Secretary, AFP Consortium
Program Manager IP & Open Standards
Ricoh Production Print Solutions
Ian Shircore, OutputLinks’ UK Country Manager, had the opportunity to speak with Harry Lewis recently about AFP, the AFP Consortium and the business value the AFPC delivers
Ian Shircore: Harry Lewis, as the first-ever President and Secretary of the AFP Consortium, quite apart from your leading IP and open standards role at Ricoh Print Production Solutions, you must have quite a job on your hands. You have 32 members, with different – often conflicting – commercial interests, from global giants like Xerox and Kodak to small specialist companies in the US, Denmark, France and Austria. How can you ever hope to keep everybody in step? Isn’t this like herding cats?
Harry Lewis: No, actually, it has been a very positive, energized and forward-looking group of people, right from the start. Honestly. And that stems from the history of the consortium, going back to the time in 2004 when IBM decided that open collaboration was the way to add color management to its AFP format, which had been their proprietary property since the 1980s. They formed the AFP Color Consortium and set up bilateral agreements with each of the members to govern the way the work should be done. But that was a great start for everyone. Because everybody could see the result was even more powerful than if we had just kept the doors closed and architected it within IBM.
Ian Shircore: The open standards approach worked immediately?
Harry Lewis: Yes, because we had members like those from Kodak, with a depth of knowledge in color science and its practicalities. That was a great advantage. Other members brought in their own expertise and perspectives, too, and it was all in the name of keeping AFP viable and moving forward.
Ian Shircore: But this was all specifically concerned with color management, was it?
Harry Lewis: It went on like this for two or three years, while they got the color architecture nailed down. And then, of course, people stopped and looked around and asked: “Well, now what do we do?” They cou
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