ISO17972-1:2015 defines an exchange format for colour and process control data (and the associated metadata necessary for its proper interpretation) in electronic form. It is the base document for describing the use of CxF3 for data exchange. Where required, this part of ISO 17972 also defines additional requirements for a valid CxF/X file. Using XML, all CxF3 and CxF/X documents also support the exchange of data outside of the graphic arts workflow and can support future standards with an extensible architecture using standard XML Names and Metadata tags which can be used with standard XML tools and pass XML validation.

Additional parts of ISO 17972 will use custom resources in conjunction with CxF3 to define the required and optional data for a particular workflow.

The current parts of ISO 17972 are:

• ISO 17972-1 Graphic technology — Colour data exchange format (CxF/X) — Part 1: Relationship to CxF3 (CxF/X-1)
• ISO 17972-2 Graphic technology — Colour data exchange format (CxF/X) — Part 2: Scanner target data (CxF/X-2)
• ISO 17972-3 Graphic technology — Colour data exchange format (CxF/X) — Part 3: Output target data (CxF/X-3)
• ISO 17972-4 Graphic technology — Colour data exchange format (CxF/X) — Part 4: Spot colour characterisation data (CxF/X-4)

The following industry documents are referenced within ISO 17972:

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), W3C Recommendation 6 October 2000. Available on the Internet at http://www.w3.org.

XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0, W3C, Recommendation 16 November 1999.
Available on the Internet at http://www.w3.org.

Download the Color Exchange Format v3.0 Schema Overview document

Download the CxF3 Schema