Technology And Practicality Opening Doors For Color Fax

Do you remember the introduction of the first fax machines? You know, those strange machines that popped up in offices in the early 80s and transmitted documents using a phone connection? Remember those shiny, flimsy paper rolls that were near impossible to read cause you could never get them to stay flat? They caught on pretty quickly, and by the mid to late 1980s, businesses around the world were getting fax machines. You may not be aware that the invention of the first facsimile machine actually took place in 1846, just about 15 years before the start of the Civil War. After another century passed, the first color version of the fax machine came out, but it would still take several decades for the color fax to make a serious impact on the business world.

Today, inkjet printers have made it less costly to print in color, and some fax machines and all-in-one printer/copier/fax machines have the ability to send and receive color faxes. But faxing in color simply hasn't caught on because it's been impractical. Up until just a few years ago, even if a business invested in a color fax machine, the color image may not properly translate to the recipient unless they also had a compatible and color-ready fax machine.

Fortunately, that's changing. Today's network-based fax broadcasting services eliminate the need for sender and recipient to purchase and configure compatible hardware. Instead, users can send color faxes directly from a PC to a color fax machine. Or, a hard-copy color fax can be sent from a fax machine to a recipient's desktop via e-mail. Problem solved? Partly. Still needing to be solved was the challenge of various incompatible electronic file formats. Color faxes are sent as ITU L*a*b color JPEG images, and personal computers aren't capable of displaying these images without the use of highly specialized software. Recent advancements in technology, however, eliminate that complication as well. Leading fax service providers now convert ITU L*a*b color images into the widely-accepted Adobe PDF format after reception - making the sending and receiving of color faxes more practical than ever.

PDF delivery also helps to preserve image quality. If someone compared two images, one of them the original color image in high-resolution, and the other a color fax converted to a PDF, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two.

Clearly, color fax has come of age. Businesses can easily take advantage of the many ways in which color brings messaging to life.

• Medical laboratories use color to add fidelity and richness to the diagnostic images they fax to physicians' offices.

• Businesses that market their services via fax use color to draw attention to text or a special announcement.

• Full-color faxes can really breathe life into brand logos.

Today, the sending and receiving of color faxes is more practical and more impactful than ever. When a picture is worth a thousand words, color fax helps tell a powerful story.