By Alex Angelle

The Institute, after several months of review by an interdepartmental technical team and recent student testing, reports excellent progress with its assessment of the GIA color reference software created by Gemewizard™ and Menahem Sevdermish of Israel.

GIA began to use the software to assist students in its Colored Stones courses in January.

“The software will help our students better understand color in gems and enable them to easily navigate through GIA ‘color space,’ the color description reference system used in our Colored Stone programs,” said William E. Boyajian, GIA’s president.

Boyajian and Andy Lucas, product manager, Gemology, presented an overview of the system during February’s International Colored Gemstone Association (ICA) Congress in Bangkok. They were followed by Sevdermish, who gave a live demonstration of the program.

“In the testing environment, multiple students were able to assess a stone’s color and agree on the hue in less than 30 seconds,” Lucas said. “We’re confident that with education, students will learn to understand the components of color and be able to consistently communicate their findings.”

Sevdermish first introduced Gemewizard to the trade in January 2003 at the ICA Congress in Jaipur, India.

“I was intrigued with Menahem’s presentation from the outset and felt the software could
be a technologically sound method of color communication for the industry,” Boyajian said. Sevdermish, in turn, wanted it tested by GIA, because, “We knew the trade and public would not accept it unless GIA approved it.”

Collaboration between GIA’s technical team and Sevdermish’s development team began in March 2003. During more than a year of testing and refinement, the teams were able to fine-tune the colors of Gemewizard to represent those in GIA’s color description system and establish standardized lighting and grading procedures that are essential to ensure consistent results.

The recent classroom testing by GIA students took the software a step further. “Our intention going forward is to support colored stone education and the colored stone industry by using the custom software as an intuitive teaching tool for our proven colored stone grading system,” Boyajian said.

“In effect, GIA’s color space has been digitized with the use of the Gemewizard
technology and our color description system is now the core reference work inside the Gemewizard product.

“Although there are many other components of the Gemewizard product line planned by Sevdermish, GIA is only involved in using its customized color description system in its Colored Stones diploma program at this point,” he said.

Sevdermish said development of an accurate color grading communications system “has been my passion for a long time.” Early attempts seemed futile, but about 13 years ago he began to experiment with computerized methods of representing color images. One of the early problems was insufficient memory, but rapid advances in computer technology solved that, and a breakthrough in measuring color more accurately occurred in 2002.

“We had in mind all along that we would one day present this to GIA, and the results have exceeded our expectations,” he said. “GIA was the key to gaining acceptance of our color communication software, and we are excited to be working with the world’s foremost authority in gemology.”