Colourhead is Michael Lithgow. I am a truly independent colour management consultant. By that I mean I am neither connected directly to any supplier nor obliged to sell or promote any particular product.
I have great industry connections and can call on these when the need arises to arrange supply, information or support on a product or service but I am totally free to advise clients on whatever I feel will provide the best outcome and in my opinion it’s a great way to run a business.
The name Colourhead was a nickname given to me by a client in my early days of working in colour management and the name stuck and seemed ideal for my business. I first formed Colourhead Digital Colour Management Services in 2002. I spent two years prior to that “reinventing” myself before making the break from my photographic enlargement printing business.
I did everything I could possibly come up with to educate myself in colour management, purchasing numerous software and hardware solutions, months and months of testing, establishing industry contacts locally and internationally, all before taking on my first paying colour management job.
It was a great time and I rode on an increasing wave of interest within the imaging industry, all the time increasing my experience and providing me with an arcane knowledge that literally couldn’t be bought.
History and Experience
In 2005 I accepted an offer to work for Kayell Australia in their newly formed Graphic Arts Division and remained there until the end of 2014, leaving to reignite my Colourhead business.
Once Australia adopted the European ISO standards, colour management became a genuinely exciting field in which to work. There was a real hunger for knowledge about colour management in general and many wanted to get on-board for fear of getting left behind.
The promise of control from the creation of an image right through to the final print had been made before but with standards the promise became reality and I was very keen to be part of it.
Photographers were the first to adopt colour management in a big way and they did so mainly with great enthusiasm but the CMYK market quickly followed and ISO compliance on press became a hot topic. Kayell sent me to the print industry expo, Drupa, in Germany twice, so I was kept up to date with the ongoing changes within the industry.
I also went to Fogra in Munich to gain certification to perform Fogra ISO Conformance Certification (ISO 12647-2) and I developed a real passion for working with presses and the people who run them and still today this makes up a lot of the work I do.
From wedding photographer to press photographer to pro lab professional
In a very real way I have worked in colour management for a very long time. My background was photographic and while I worked for some time as a photographer doing magazine, model folios and wedding work among others, it was in labs that I got the most satisfaction.
I am a technical person and I loved the on-going challenge of keeping a lab whether small or large, running at peak efficiency and the utmost quality. I really enjoyed the team atmosphere of a great lab. I don’t just mean between members of the staff but that between the lab and the photographer.
Regardless of the skill of the photographer, their clients ultimately judged them by the end product, the prints. I was well aware of my role in maintaining the photographer’s reputation and I relished it. Back then colour management was more about keeping a clean machine, fresh chemicals and the associated chemical monitoring. Ph levels, Specific Gravity and densitometric graphs were as important as one’s skill as a printer in a high quality pro lab. In 1990
I started my own lab doing high quality custom colour printing. It was all hand printing on the best enlargers and equipment available. It was mainly folio and exhibition work and enlargements for my client’s own high end clients. Each time a client would return to my lab and tell me they had won an award or a competition I felt as excited as they did.
Many of my clients referred to themselves and me as a team and I always thought those were the people who “got it” and it is the same with colour management. News of their successes made me beam with pride and in fact still does just recalling it. That is the attitude I try to bring to my work still today and many of my clients comment on my level of enthusiasm. If that ever goes I will look at doing something else.