License and Use

ChromaSpot is industrial infrastructure. Infrastructure that charges for access to itself stops being infrastructure. The colours, their spectra, the exports and everything on these pages are free to use.

Who publishes it

Publisher	ChromaSync sp. z o.o.
Address	ul. Królowej Jadwigi 219 30-218 Kraków, Poland
KRS	0000887610
NIP	PL 6772461767

What you may do


Use the colours	In design work, production, specification, tooling — commercial or not, with no fee and no registration.
Download and redistribute the files	CxF, CGATS, ACB, ASE. Pass them to suppliers, put them on an internal server, ship them with a job.
Build software on it	RIPs, formulation systems, plug-ins, colour servers, open-source applications. See Integrations.
Quote the codes and names	In specifications, brand manuals, artwork, purchase orders.

The licence: CC BY 4.0

The ChromaSpot library — the codes, the spectral measurements under M0, M1 and M2, the derived colorimetry, the brightener model, the names in every language and the export files — is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may use, copy, redistribute, adapt and build on it, commercially or not, with one obligation: say where it came from.

Attribution means naming ChromaSpot and ChromaSync, linking to chromaspot.org and to the licence, and saying so if you changed anything. In software an About entry or a line in the documentation is enough; a redistributed file keeps the attribution it was published with. A modified set must say that it is modified, and must not be called ChromaSpot.

That is the whole licence. Nothing else on this page is a condition of using the data. What follows is what the ChromaSpot name stands for, which the licence does not cover, and how the official set is kept.

What is free, and what is not

Free, under CC BY 4.0	On ChromaSync’s own terms
The library as published in its manifest: codes, names, spectra and colorimetry under M0, M1 and M2, the brightener model and reference substrates, subsets, orderings, print-condition ranges, CMYK values, and the CxF, CGATS, ACB and ASE exports.	ChromaSync’s desktop and mobile applications. Datasets published outside the library manifest — substrate databases, tone-value and ink-concentration models. The Verified programme, custom libraries, and integrator agreements. See Support the project.

The ChromaSpot name

ChromaSpot is a registered trade mark, used by ChromaSync sp. z o.o. The licence above does not cover it. You may use the name to say truthfully that your product, file or document uses the ChromaSpot library, on two conditions:

1. No charge for access to the colours. An end user of your product must be able to find a colour, read its definition and export it without an additional charge. Charge for what you built; do not charge for the colours.

2. No modified library presented as ChromaSpot. A set that adds, removes or alters colours must not be called ChromaSpot, nor described in a way that suggests it is the official library. Sorting, subsetting or reformatting the official set is not a modification.

A product that does not meet these conditions may still use the data. It may not use the name.

Printed references, inks, substrates and other products that carry the ChromaSpot name as a mark of conformity need a trade mark licence and verification by ChromaSync — the Verified programme below.

The code is the identifier

The official and unambiguous identifier of a colour is its code, for example 5R5.47. The name is an optional alias that makes a colour easier to remember and to talk about.

In technical documentation, specifications, purchase orders, brand manuals, software, and wherever a colour is formally specified, give the code. Giving the code with the name — 5R5.47 Brick — is recommended; the code alone is sufficient. In informal communication, conversation and working notes, the name alone is fine.

Official names and translations

Each code has one official name per language, unique within that language. Regional forms of the same language — American, British, Australian English — do not get separate variants.

Anyone may translate the names; the licence covers them. To have a translation published as the official version for a new language, send the complete set to ChromaSync at info@chromaspot.org with a statement that:

Same terms	the translation is released on the same terms as the library (CC BY 4.0);
No third-party rights	it infringes no third-party rights.

After verification the translation may be published as the official language version.

Support the project

The library is free and will stay free. What keeps it going is measurement, editions and maintenance, and there are five ways to carry part of that.

	What it is	What you get
Sponsor	An annual contribution, invoiced.	Your logo on this site and a line in the edition’s manifest.
Integrator agreement	For software that embeds the library.	Support, early access to editions, an assured feed.
Verified	For presses, inks, substrates and printed references, measured against the library.	The right to carry the ChromaSpot name as a mark of conformity.
Applications	ChromaSync’s tools built on the library, priced low.	Convenience; the data underneath stays free.
A contribution	One-off, from anyone who finds the library useful.	Our thanks, and a line in the changelog if you want one.

For any of them, write to info@chromaspot.org.

What we do not collect

Today this site has no accounts, no login and no analytics. The library is fetched as static files and every export is assembled in your own browser — when you press Download, nothing is uploaded and no record is made of what you chose. Your scratchpad is stored by your browser, on your machine, and is not sent anywhere.

This describes how the site works, not a term of the licence. If it ever changes — an account for a service, a count of what is downloaded — this page will say so before it does, and the library itself will stay what it is: static files, free, under the licence above.

Which also means we cannot help you recover it. Clearing your browser data clears the scratchpad. Export anything you want to keep.

Trademarks and other people’s colours

Colour names in this library are chosen from common vocabulary and checked against the existing set. They are not intended to reference anyone’s mark, and where a conflict is raised the name is withdrawn rather than defended — the colour keeps its code and gets a new name, and the withdrawn name is never issued to another colour.

ChromaSpot does not reproduce, convert or claim compatibility with any other manufacturer’s colour system. Where a colour here happens to sit close to one in another system, that is arithmetic, not a relationship.

The formal terms

The paragraphs above state the project’s intent plainly and accurately, and the intent will not change. The licence itself is the CC BY 4.0 text linked above. A formal version of the name policy may later be published in wording approved by counsel; nothing in it will contradict the principles on this page.