Retouching History: The Chromacom
Here’s a little bit of retouching history: When I first started retouching, which was in ’86, it was on a HELL Chromacom, imported from Germany. It was the very early days of digital retouching and image editing. This was obviously pre-Photoshop, which just celebrated it’s 25 year anniversary. I couldn’t find a photo of my old workstation, but found this online, and it looks quite similar. I’d type a “command” (in German!) on left hand keyboard/screen, and use the digitized mouse and tablet to airbrush, clone, color adjust, composite images, resize, etc. We worked in “cool rooms” behind closed glass sliding doors. The floor was elevated several inches to allow the multitude of cables, wires, and connectors to run from each piece of machinery to the others. The room was also quite dark: no beams of light to reflect on the screens and alter our vision of the images being retouched. And get this!….. The HELL Chromacom early retouching station along with several 200mb disc drives (each almost washing machine size!) cost $750,000! And that’s in 1980’s dollars! I’m not a math genius, but I did win my 8th grade class math award, and that kind of investment meant that we needed to do a lot of retouching to make a profit. We did more than a lot. Being the only game in town with this revolutionary machine, The Chromacom and us three operators worked around the clock, including weekends, to get all the work out to the ad agencies and businesses that came calling. Nowadays, an agency or business may have several iMac workstations operating simultaneously, using Photoshop software. A good iMac with more than enough RAM and storage might cost $1200. Yes, just like everything else in this digital world, retouching and photo editing have come a long way. And in the hands of a skilled technician, the results just keep getting better.
300 mb disc drives – -could run this machine today if it was in front of me.
I started out as a scanner operator and then worked on the Chromacom, I loved going to work back then, learned lots of tricks from one of guys who help create it..
Was a Chromacom operator myself. What a wonderful machine this was.
Hey Tom,
I also was a Cromacom operator in Illinois, learned a lot about color.
I’m a chromacom operator from Malaysia.
Still remember those codes… Anpa,opla…
Sco, sdo, slu, lz, tz….. ahhhha le bei tempi!!
I too could run a Combi today the narrow color band adjustment still cant be beat !!! But 30 years later this industry that I loved so much is gone Today I am a contractor working outside on long island in the cold air and to tell you the truth a lot less stress .
Just discovered this page. I couldn’t agree more, I stil consider some of the colour retouching functions including bandwidth adjustment with the analogue
controls, superior to Photoshop. I was part instrumental in developing a Chomacom studio at D.S.Colour International (Sam Roubini) in 1981. We eventually had 2 work stations, 15 300mb disc drives, 2 Hell 350 scanners, a Hell 380 poster scanner and various other related bits of equipment – a huge invesment. Nowadays we can do most of the work done then in our back bedroom on a PC and a printer/scanner. Happy days! Retired now, but
nostalgic for those pioneering days.
Hi Derek
Your post takes me back also to 1981 working at D.S.Colour Int. Ltd. I used to work alongside Chris Green in the office trying to work out all those calculations to resize artwork getting ready for print etc..just a school leaver in those days but gained useful insight. I remember Sam Roubini and working with all the great team at Britannia Row Islington! Tim
Hi Bill
I loved working on the Combi ,I am out of he business and on ;long island too but at least I’m working inside. Was in the union Local 1P that didn’t work out so well when it came to he pension
One more Chromacom operator here in northeastern Italy! How many working hours spent on this monster… and how many nights running assembly process. I can’t forget that sense of anxiety seeing the process on the control monitor. (Do you rimenber program 25/Konti?)
Thanks for your comments Marco. Those were the days! Honestly, I do not remember program 25/Konti, but I feel your pain! We’ve come a long way in 25 years, but the Chromacom was a revolutionary piece of technology.
Konti was only on cc-2000 I think, for processing the line work, if I remember correctly.
But it was about 25 years ago I may be wrong.
Yes, I remember.
Also remember the prog. 8 which is named busy.
Anyone use the “Midas” before. It is a programme which can change the parameter of the existing file by inputing command.
BTW, I am also a Chromacom operator in HK in 198X, I cannot remember.
Happy to share with all you guys about the past.
Ivan Lee
Ahh the first 10 years of my working life was as a chromacom and hell scanner operator.
The royalty of prepress!
I walked away when photoshop and quark express appeared.
Hello Jem…….yes….it was a great time for me also, but too long ago to remember the commands and procedures. I was still doing scans on a HELL DC350 up till 5 years ago! Good to hear from you and take care.
Great page! I started working on a Chromacom back in ’89 eventually moving on to the Combi 2000 and the Linotype-Hell Davinci. Thanks.
KRE,FF,1…..on the good ole function keyboard. I was trained in the first group as an instructor for HCM Corp in Great Neck , NY on the Chromacom. sw was B1 and still in German. Found memories of traveling and spending a few months training
Well how bout that? Hello Mark. Maybe we crossed paths. HELL, …(joke there)….maybe YOU trained ME! I went to Great Neck in ’86, I believe. I worked for the Sack’s (Charlie, Chuck, and Vance) for 29 years here in Austin. Small world. Here in Austin, Tony McKernan was my mentor. Tony married Barbara Sack. You must’ve known the Sack family. Those were the days, right? I hope you’re well.Take care….
WOW! I was a Combi operator in Little Rock Arkansas starting in ’90 or ’91. I doubt I could remember any of my German command lines though, but gosh what a fantastic time. We had a room full of the disk trays we had to manage.
Our company got some of the first DaVinci machines that came out in the States and we moved to that platform but our old Combi sat there for years and was used fairly regularly until we turned it off for the last time, probably around ’97 or ’98. Tons of memories from that time, and I was fortunate to work with some amazing people.
Hey Terry. Thanks for the comments. Yes, it was quite a machine back in the day. I also agree with you: no recollection of the German commands! We too had to make a big decision regarding the DaVinci. We chose the mac, and Photoshop, The rest is history! It was a great time.
Wow, what great memories back in the mid to late 80s… The one keyboard was all German abbreviations (wbr, fko,etc…).
I just happen to discover this post and had to comment.
Ahhhhhhh. fko! that rings a bell! thanks for your comments. take care….
Happy days. Started on the system in 84 along with mounting transparencies on the scanner drums using the projector station that scaled and angled to your lay down so you didn’t spend days waiting for AUTO and KONTI to process big transformation! Also had the off line LP307 station that’s only task was to create all of your shapes to save the operator on the big boys machine! Remember getting on to an original Mac and laughing at it thinking it’d never catch on! Wish it hadn’t, I’d be far wealthier now! Hello to all fellow Hell operators from Paul in London.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the good ol days of the Chromacom Paul. That seems to be the opinion of most Chromacom operators I’ve talked to, or heard from. Best to you!
Good times. Worked on Chromacom for nearly 10 years in South Africa. We had 2 of them 6 operators working 3 shifts round the clock for 6 days a week. We were in a class of our own spoke a language that nobody else understood and were paid well. Now a Mac operator can be up and running in hours, then it took months of training. We used to use 300Mb disks and back up onto Magtapes. The worst par of the disk drives was when there was a head crash, don’t think I will ever forget that smell of trashed disk and head.
Andrew,
Oh the memories. Agree with all of the above.
I ran all the big Crosfield devices (835,865,880,895 and Colorspaces) for 11 years. We were the kings of the world…
Then came Photoshop.
Hi All
Worked on the Cromacom 2000 / DC400 scanners/ film recorder back in early 90’s in India. Used to train freshers in color correction and pagemakeup in mid 90’s. When the 7100/8100 Macintosh,s arrived they could not compete with these high end systems. But their lower cost and gradual improvements slowly killed the high end platforms from Linotype hell, Scitex, & Barco,
The konti/kontu, PRT, BD1/BD2, UefRal, color correction, 5 point mouse and digital grid table — were all features very advanced for their times.
Last High end I used was DaVinci based on Silicaon Graphics Indigo 2 platform. Then the Macs had conquered all. The cost was a factor and open end operating systems were supposed to be the liberators.
But I will say that the older system were designed for professionals and offered everything needed to get the job done.
Hi Vivek
I’m french and since 1982 still an operator on drum scanner.
As far as I know, it only existed one Hell scanner with a name 4xx. The CS410 I think, It was an input scanner for the Chromacom.
I’m a passionate collector of all books, technical Informations and so on … about drum scanners of the past. I would like to write a book or create a virtual museum of those fascinating machines and I have already a lot material but nothing regarding this specific machine.
Do you still have some information, photography, brochure or something like that about this special and very rare machine?
Thanks a lot for your answer in advance. Luc
Great to read all these comments. I worked with two Hell Scanners, a 410 color seperation output, the 300mg disks, Control Data’s washing machine drives, mag-tape storage, and the retouching workstations. I had been airbrushing prints and retouching dupe transparencies for gang separations during the 70s and in the early 80s, Andy Cha started Colorscope in L.A. and offered me a ride into the future on the Hell System. We built from scratch with the raised modular flooring, Halon Fire Suppression, and the necessary A/C system to avoid a temp-flux head crash. We did a lot of seps for fashion and car brochures which required a night crew to run the final corrections. A 2-page image correction could take 3 hours to process, needing to chain two drives/discs in order to hold all the data! We had to convert our conference room into a make-up station in order to get all the acetate leaders for scan angles and start points set up for the drum scanners. The major printers in L.A. at the time were very leery of digital image assembly and engraving plates from digital data, hence the 410 film output. We had to provide the densitometer readings on ever sheet of separation film in order for the printers to accept them. By 2001 I was doing digital image management on a Mac system and wide-format giclee printing for GoodSalt, who markets thousands of images worldwide. I’m retired now but still enjoy experimenting with digital art via Photoshop. Hell of a ride from horse and buggy days to walking on the moon. Thanks for bringing back a lot of memories, Tom!
Hi everyone, I’m also a chromacom operator from Malaysia during the early 90s
hey Bro
whidh outfit did you work at during your time, Might have met you …
Anyone remember the command anpa, opla?
ANPA, OPLA (disk-drive ID)
That was to specify disk (ID) as source device.
These were German language command abbreviations for: “ANPAssungen – OriginalPLAtte”
Another was ANPA, EPLA for “Endseite” disk.
I found a way to use “File” program to have the system process large number of final pages in a sequence, all by itself, unmanned.
This trick, when found by local Hell service engineer, found its way to Hell manuals in a bit later software release.
I never received any credit for it…
We are giving you credit now! Apologies for no financial benefits for this credit, but nonetheless, that’s impressive.
Ran the Combi in the Boston area in the 1990s, until they tossed it in the dumpster. I kept the digitizing tablet for years, and wish I’d kept the keyboard for old times sake. I ran a number of Hell scanners, and had come from a dot etching background. I still work in the field, and with at least one other ex-Chromacom operator (or Kombi as we called it). I remember making a HyperCard stack that generated trim and bleed coordinates for an entered page size, which was more reliable and repeatable than clicking around with the digitizer. Editing pages in Medis at 3 in the morning, and watching a job run that included a bunch of someone’s mistakes so you could pinpoint where you needed to make an edit was sometimes comical. I did miss the source/destination color correction ability for some time, the closest thing for years on the Mac being Aurelon CoCo. I remember that the command for linking two disk drives was the same command as for erasing a drive, and every operator had their moment of realizing they’d just wiped out a drive instead of chaining them.
I was a Chromacom operator for best part of 10 years mid 80s-90s in Australia. Still have dreams about them
started on m70
then r 30 and finally
cc2000
Still remember heaps of commands,
Anpa opla 5, epla 7
The programs, busy mani autorun reco Cant remember what the endfile editor was called. I guess I forget more than I remember
Hi Jem, I wonder where you worked at that time? I arrived in Sydney in ’92 as a very experienced but very out of work chromacom operator following the big recession that devastated the industry in London. By an amazing stroke of luck, literally the day I got off the plane I saw a job advertised in Kerry Packers ACP I the centre of the city. I was told I was the luckiest Pom on the planet and started the following Monday! All I did was put together the covers for magazines, so lots of retouching, colouring up overly complex linework, and trying to keep the editors and art directors happy! It was a great job and a great regret that I left and went home a couple of years later, never to see another Combi again.
The endfile editor was Medis.
So glad I found this thread. I started on the Combiskop in ‘86. It was thrilling, and I’m still proud to have been a pioneer in digital imaging
I still have a 300MB disk pack in my office, just so I can tell old-timer stories to the new kids.
KRE,FF,1!
im thinking manila… mani -lah
I participated in the beta testing of the Kodak Premier Image Enhancement System beginning in 1990 and then used it for six years before moving on to a color separation house where the Chromacom was still in use. I thought is was fitting that it was made by Hell and thought that I was in hell for a few weeks before I began to catch on. Does anyone remember trying to undo a correction accidentally applied while zoomed in? Moved on to Silicon Graphics with Alias Eclipse software. I still think it had the best warping capabilities.
was an operator in the 80’s in LA. those dambed macs took over. had to shift tech. now a mac retoucher
Anyone know of any ChromaCom video available? I checked on YouTube, but couldn’t find anything at all.
U can check out this Hong Kong movie starting scene. It has the chromacom machine at 2.00 onwards.
https://youtu.be/sdxGthAgj6w
Hey paul
Our paths may have crossed!
I was at ACP for a few months around 94 i think, mostly on the midnight-dawn shift doing the mag covers. i think they saved the “racier” mags for us. We spent a lot of time retouching the nude pics.. “healing” the women we called it!
Then i “crossed the floor” and went to work for the Australian Scitex agent. supporting their kit, which was no where near as good. but some fun years.
We all have some great Chromacom memories!..
I installed your company’s system in 85 I remember tony chuck vance barbara I worked directly for Ed Neninger sacks were very nice family RIP Ed
Hello Paul and how bout that! First: thank you for the work you did getting Capital Spectrum up and running. We had a great run with the Chromacom, before we transitioned into the Mac and Photoshop. Personally, I “graduated” into the Chromacom world in ’87, after working with the color camera, followed by 3 years on the Hell scanners. I’m assuming you worked for Hell Graphic Systems, and your home base was Port Washington, New York. I was sent there for a month of training. Great times, and fond memories. Hope you are well and happy new year to you and yours. Thanks again for reaching out.
I, too, was a Chromacon op in Dundee, Scotland.
The company I worked for bought big and had four Hell scanners and five workstations on 24/7.
The Hell hardware and Israeli software was way before Photoshop and still there are features that Photoshop can’t do.
These days are gone!
Remember carrying these heavy discs?
Hello Colin! Great to hear from another Chromacom man. My back is still feeling the effects from moving about the 200mb discs. You (we!) were a pioneer. Somebody owes you a residual check for helping develop the industry!
https://www.hell-kiel.de/de/hell-entwicklungen/166-reproduktionstechnik/systemtechnik
Enjoy!
Hi to all past Chromacom operators?
What a great find this site is! I worked on one of the first Chromacom systems way back in the early eighties here in Toronto, Canada. I have an artistic background so this system lent itself well to me. Great way to make a buck back in the day! I have still managed to make a living retouching, but miss the good ‘ole days!
Glenn Honiball
Thanks for your comments Glenn! And happy to hear you are still in the retouching world, making everything you touch better.
I was one of the chromacom operator back in 1990 till 1995 based in Malaysia. I still have a photo of myself operating the machine. Do let me know if u want the photo 😁
From an insider…
I worked for HCM – Hell Color Metal starting in 1983. Soon after that, HCM was purchased by Siemens and the name was changed to Hell Graphic Systems. I worked in the demo room in Great Neck, then became a scanner instructor, which led to being a Chomacom instructor. A complete system, including the Chromacom and a System Scanner, like the CP341, and a bunch of CDC disc drives, could cost up to $2.5M.
Training for a Chromacom System could take up to 6 weeks. Learning the functional keyboard, with the German acronyms, like PRT-8 (pixel cloning) was an art. It was always impressive to see an experienced operator use that keyboard! From Great Neck, we moved to Port Washington, and then to Melville, where I became a demonstrator not only for the newly named Chromacom 2000, but also the Chromacom 1000, which ran on a Siemens/Nexdorf PC. Not long after that, Hell Graphic Systems merged into Linotype and the new company was formed – Linotype-Hell. At that point, we moved again, this time to Hauppauge. Some may argue that Linotype bought Hell Graphic Systems. The word within the company was that Linotype had lots of cash, but had not invested any in new, upcoming technology. On the other hand, Hell Graphic Systems had invested heavily in new technology (Postscript at the time), and had little money, making the company ripe for sale, merger, take-over, whatever. That was when we introduced Davinci. I was the USA product specialist and traveled all over the country getting it in the hands of our beta sites, teaching them how to use it, collecting bug reports (of which in the early days, there were a lot of) and reporting to product management in the USA and Germany. I later became the product manager, and it wasn’t always easy. But it was fun and worth it. Davinci eventually became a great system and I was proud to be part of it from introduction to EOL.
Then Linotype-Hell was bought outright by Heidelberg. I was part of the acquisition and relocated to Atlanta. Davinci ran on a highly sophisticated, proprietary computer, but in those days, SGI (Silicon Graphics) was all the rage, and I was instrumental in convincing the company to migrate the system from the proprietary computer to SGI. We kept it going for a very long time until we finally had to end the project, for reasons I probably shouldn’t disclose. I will leave at this: Photoshop, Quark Express, and Pagemaker were getting more and more sophisticated and could do much of the same work at a lower cost for the system, and the operators. The same fate came to Scitex and Crossfield, but Davinci outlasted all of them. Not only did this mark the end of high-end retouching and pagination systems, but the onset of very capable digital cameras and inexpensive flat-bed scanners meant the end of life for the famous Hell Scanners and others. As a side note, a scanner in those days could cost as much a $400,000!
After nearly 30 years with HCM, HGS, L-H, and then Heidelberg, I finally left the company in at the end of 2012. It was a great run and I loved it (most of the time, anyway). I met a lot of good people in the USA and Germany, and still keep in touch with many of my colleagues. Now I am loving life as a professional photographer.
Hello James!, and thanks so much for all the content/information regarding the early days of retouching…..Great Stuff! We may have met, and you possibly trained me on the Chromacom in Port Washington! I was sent back East (in ’86 I believe) for a two week training course at HCM. I grew up with Vance Sack, and was hired first as a Proofer, then Camera man, and eventually a scanner operator, before becoming a Chromacom operator, for Capital Spectrum, Inc., owned and operated by the Sack family, including Charlie (father), and sons Chuck and Vance. I KNOW you know these men! In fact, I stayed in the Sack’s home in East Norwich while training in Port Washington. I was the second person to learn the Chromacom system at Capital Spectrum, and was lucky enough to have Tony McKernan (great friend) on board at Capital Spectrum to further my Chromacom education after the initial two week training sessions. Like you said, it was a great time in the industry, and I’m proud to have been a part of the early days. As for the Davinci: what I recall was that I was pushing for our company to go in that direction, but we ultimately went to Photoshop, and the rest is history. 2012 was also the year my career took a slight turn, and after 29 years at one company, I became a freelance retoucher, and now work almost exclusively for GSD&M ad agency here in Austin, Texas. THANKS again James and take good care!
Thanks for having me here. I enjoyed adding my two cents. It was a little nostalgic for me. I see that Mark Tonkovich also made a contribution here. I know him well and still talk to him from time to time.
I’ve been to Capitol Spectrum several times and had some good times there. Once with Jon Sigl, who you may remember. The Sacks took us out on the lake to go waterskiing. I also remember when Capitol Spectrum was considering DaVinci. I was pretty involved in that (and with almost every DaVinci sale in the USA). We were pretty disappointed when they decided against it. I’m sure that Chuck Sack remembers me. I actually still have a T-Shirt that he gave me. It has artwork on it from a local artist and says something like, “Austin. A Capitol Spectrum.”
All the best! Jim
PRt-9 was cloning, not 8. Not that it makes a diiference now – I punched in FKF PRT 9 CMYK thousands of times and might still have the muscle memory to do it again if sat in front of a “functional keyboard.”
I took a different tack post retouching/printing. The system did nothing for record keeping, and the notebooks we wrote down what we did became illegible quickly.
I got on the Combi in ‘84 in Manhattan at Bianca Graphics, and later at the Color Wheel. ‘84 was the year the Mac came out – I got one and started writing databases for Combi info. still doing database stuff today, having left the printing biz in the rear view long ago.