Color Profiles.
Without all the work.

Cortex predicts spectral color for any printer–material combination using proprietary AI — no lab visits, no thousands of measured patches. It features a powerful API that outputs a wide variety of file formats for use in your own workflow.

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Cortex AI Eye

The Problem with color Profiling

Today's approach to color management doesn't scale. Every combination of printer, ink and material demands its own profile — created by hand.

Printer Manufacturers

Every new media requires a custom profile. Each one takes days, expensive equipment, and expert operators.

Material Manufacturers

Supporting thousands of printer–ink–material combinations means hosting, maintaining and distributing thousands of profiles — most out of date the day they ship.

RIP Software

You cannot sell what you cannot demonstrate. Without pre-built profiles for the printer on the floor, every sales call becomes a profiling session.

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Meet Cortex

Cortex is a proprietary cascade of collaborating machine-learning models, developed entirely in-house at ColorBase. It takes substrate appearance and ink behaviour as inputs and predicts the full spectral reflectance for any CMYK mixture — without a single physical print.

Three-model cascade: Ink and Material Interaction model feeds into Dot Gain Prediction, which feeds into Spectral Curve prediction producing 31-band spectral reflectance from 400–700nm
31 Spectral Bands
1.2 ΔE₂₀₀₀ Accuracy
400K+ Measured Patches Compared

Tested and trained on: HP Latex, Roland Resin, Roland Solvent, Mimaki UV, Canon UV Gel, Fujifilm UV, Fujifilm AQUAFUZE

See How It Works

How It Works

Getting started with Cortex is straightforward. Onboard your materials and printers — we handle the rest.

Material Onboarding

Send Samples

Ship A4 samples of your media to our lab.

We Measure

We characterise the substrate spectral properties and add it to the ColorBase 5 database.

Instant Profiles

Your material instantly has profiles available for all onboarded printers. When new printers are added to the database, your material automatically benefits.

Printer Onboarding

Print Test Files

Print our standardised test charts on your printer.

Ship to Lab

Send the printed pages to our measurement lab. No on-site visit needed.

Automatic Coverage

Your printer automatically has profiles available for all compatible materials that have been onboarded. As new materials are added, your printer benefits immediately.

Get Onboarded

Industry-Leading Accuracy

Across the printing technologies that matter most and we are not done yet! Cortex is continuously evolving and improving.

UV Average Prediction 0.8 ΔE
Latex Average Prediction 1.3 ΔE
Solvent Average Prediction 1.2 ΔE
Overall Average Prediction 1.0 ΔE

Validated on independent printer–material combinations from the ColorBase 5 database across 13 printers and 48+ materials.


ΔE₂₀₀₀ (CIEDE2000) — the industry-standard perceptual color difference metric. Values below 1.0 are generally imperceptible to the human eye.

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The ColorBase 5 Database

Cortex is powered by ColorBase 5 — our proprietary database of printer and material profiles, built over years of measurement and modelling. Every onboarded printer and material expands the network of available combinations for all participants.

13+ Printers Onboarded
48+ Materials Measured
600+ Combinations Available

Is your printer or material already onboarded?

Check Coverage

Built for Your Role

Cortex serves four distinct audiences, each with unique challenges and benefits.

Printer Manufacturers

Offering new media profiles as a service shouldn't require in-house profiling infrastructure.

Material Manufacturers

A single onboarding sends your material across every compatible printer in the database.

RIP Software Houses

Ship your software with working profiles for any printer your customer walks in with.

Software Engineers & CTOs

Integrate Cortex via REST API with full pipeline control and extensible output formats.

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The Cortex API

A modular pipeline architecture. Build color prediction into your workflow.

API pipeline flow: Request enters Cortex Model for spectral prediction, then Conversion for spectral-to-colorimetric, then Output Builder for format-specific export, producing an API Response

Building Blocks

Cortex Model

Spectral prediction input

Spectral → Colorimetric

color space conversion

CGATS Exporter

ISO-standard data output

JSON Exporter

Structured data for any system

XML Exporter

Workflow tool interop

Roland RML Builder

VersaWorks media profiles

ONYX OML Builder

ONYX media library format

ICC Profile

Universal color management

Custom Blocks

Extend with your own logic

Quick Start

bash Pipeline Predict Request 
curl -X POST https://api.cortex.colorbase.com/api/v1/pipeline/default/predict \
  -H "X-API-Key: your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "printer_id": "roland-truevis-vg3",
    "material_id": "ritrama-ri-jet-165-m1",
    "cmyk": [80, 40, 0, 10],
    "output_format": "spectral_json"
  }'

Endpoint: /api/v1/pipeline/{name}/predict · Authenticated with X-API-Key · Returns structured output in the configured format.

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Output Formats

Cortex produces output in the formats your tools already consume.

ICC Profile

Universal color management

Roland RML

Drop-in media profile for VersaWorks RIP

ONYX OML

ONYX Graphics media library format

CGATS.17

ISO-standard measurement data

JSON

Structured data for any downstream system

XML

Interoperable with print workflow tools

CIE XYZ / CIELAB / sRGB

Direct colorimetric values

Custom Blocks

Extend with your own logic

Get in Touch

Ready to transform your color profiling workflow? Whether you're exploring Cortex for the first time or ready to integrate, we'd love to hear from you.

  • Personalised demo of the Cortex platform
  • Technical deep-dive with our engineering team
  • API access and integration support