Scitex CT

Scitex Continuous Tone or Scitex CT is an image file format. It is designed specifically for use on Scitex graphics processing equipment.^[1] Its use is supported by numerous graphics suites and desktop publishing packages, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and QuarkXPress.

The Scitex Continuous Tone Format is used for high-end print works on Scitex computers. This format needs special scanners and rasterizing formats, and is designed for output of high-quality print such as magazines and art prints. This is the native format used by Scitex scanners and printers for high-end image processing and color separation. Scitex CT files store uncompressed, CMYK true-color raster data. They contain a Control Block, a Parameters Block, and the image data. Scitex CT images are typically four-color separation, CMYK, line-interleaved raster data. The separations are always stored by scan line and in the order C-M-Y-K (cyan-magenta-yellow-black). A color pixel value have up to 16 separations (128 bits) in size. Separations 1 through 4 are defined in order (C-M-Y-K). Separations 5 through 16 are reserved for future expansion of the format, as shown below. Each row or Scitex CT image data is stored in separated color. The first separation's row data is followed by the second, and so forth, up to the number of separations specified by NumColorSeparations. Only the data for the separations defined by the SeparationsBitMask field is actually stored in the CT file. Each pixel can contain up to 16 separation components and each component is one byte in size. A CMYK pixel contains four components and is of a 32-bit size. Remember that the data is not stored by pixel, but by separation. If rows contain odd numbers of bytes, the zero padding byte will be added to the end of each separation to preserve word alignment.^[2]

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