There are several options in ColourSys which have been designed to allow colours which don’t currently contain particular colour values to be converted in order to attain the necessary values for use elsewhere.

In ColourSys, go to Colour Menu > Convert Document and select one of the following:

• Monitor RGB to Lab - this brings colours which are out of monitor gamut back into gamut creating XYZ values based on your current profile. This option allows you to take a colour file from another AVA station without colourmatching and map the colours to those shown on screen as opposed to mapping the colour file to show them on screen how the colours actually print (see Printer RGB to XYZ).
• Printer RGB to Lab - this brings colours which are out of printer gamut back into gamut creating XYZ values based on your current printer profile, therefore adjusting your colours to show you what will actually print.

The Gamut Window can demonstrate what happens when colours are out of gamut. For example, a blue colour which is outside the printers gamut will be seen outside the visible gamut area of the printer.

The printer cannot print this colour so when it is printed, ColourSys will pick a colour which is as close as possible on the printer. You can see which colour this will be by performing the following steps:

1. Highlight the out of gamut blue in the colour file.
2. Go to Colour Menu > Conversions > Printer RGB To XYZ. A new colour file is created.
3. Highlight the specific chip in the new colour file.

This chip will have Lab values corresponding to the colour that ColourSys is going to print on the printer, not the original colour.

The Gamut Window now shows the printed colour. You will see that it has moved to the edge of the printer gamut and is able to be printed more accurately.

• Reflectance to Lab - gives colours with reflectance data XYZ values. This can be used to repair corruption in imported colour files but is mainly used for internal AVA testing.
• Clean up Reflectance Data - used when importing Colour.dat files into ColourSys. This option should not be applied unless instructed by a member of AVA Technical Support, as it smoothes the reflectance data thus rendering the colours less accurate.
• Average Colour - this will average the colour of all the chips in your active colour file and put the resulting colour chip into a new colour file.
• Average Documents - allows you to find the average colours between two colour files. This function takes the first chip in each file and averages them, then the second chip in each and averages them, and so on, resulting in a third colour file. This function is usually applied to the AVA Production Colour Profiling module. It allows you to read step wedges twice, opening them into two different colour files and make an average document to give you a better accuracy.
• Synthesise Reflectance - when you only have lab data for some colours, this will generate plausible reflectance curves. This can be useful when reflectance data is required for use with custom overprints and for export to some colour kitchens.