After several months of review by its interdepartmental technical team and recent classroom testing by students, the Gemological Institute of America reports excellent progress with its assessment of the GIA color-reference software created by Gemewizard and Menahem Sevdermish of Israel.

GIA began using the software to assist students in its colored-stones courses in January 2005. According to William E. Boyajian, GIA’s president, “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-stones diploma program.”

Gemewizard was introduced to the trade by Sevdermish in January 2003 at the International Colored Gemstone Association Congress in Jaipur, India. (See “Stuller Offers Gemewizard Color Software,” JCK, April 2003, p. 34.)

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 two teams fine-tuned the colors of Gemewizard to represent those in GIA’s color-description system and to establish standardized lighting and grading procedures that were essential to ensure consistent results.

“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. 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,” says Boyajian.

“Although there are many other components of the Gemewizard product line planned by Sevdermish,” Boyajian adds, “at this point GIA is involved only in using its customized color-description system in its colored-stones diploma program.”