Producing vivid and, more importantly, accurate colour for your wide-format print jobs is now becoming increasingly easy as colour correction software evolves
As with any perceptual medium, colour is very subjective and we all perceive and respond to it in different ways. A good example of this is Xrite’s online hue test which compares how men and women see differently. This portal also highlights that 0.4 percent of women and 8.3 percent of men have some form of colour vision deficiency. You can take the official FM100 Hue Test by X-Rite ar www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77.
The conclusion simply is that what we see is not always what we get. Even black and white images that have just a tint of green or red to them can go wrong if the devices you use are not calibrated. You will simply never be able get an acceptable level of colour accuracy from your printer and as a result will never be able to promise quality brand or image reproduction.
Developments in this field have come thick and fast, driven by the corresponding evolution of print hardware and the increasingly stringent demands for perfect colour accuracy ”
Developments in this field have come thick and fast, driven by the corresponding evolution of print hardware and the increasingly stringent demands for perfect colour accuracy for everything from logo reproduction on banners through to point-of-sale work in high street retail stores.
The first step to taking advantage of the very latest colour correction technology has to be the calibration of devices, monitors, scanners, printers, and software settings. So lets start with standard production software.
Studio software
Colour settings in Illustrator, Photoshop CS, InDesign, Adobe Write and CorelDraw all vary to some degree and use different avenues to get the same result. If we are using multiple products to produce our output the colour management should always be set the same, whether it is a press standards like Euroscale, Frogra, Gracol or just an Adobe standard.
Investing in a quality colour measurement technology will bear dividends with
long-term consistency of quality output
They should all match both for CMYK and RGB workflow. You must also be aware that many files already have colour management attached to them, so making sure you have the option ticked to ignore this is a must. This will allow the raster image processor (RIP) software to take full control, levelling the playing field to one colour control source.
The kit
There are a multitude of different devices on the market and software to run them. I personally use X-Rite i1Proffesional Colour Management, as the company has a very strong research and development arm and has a very good track record when it comes to implementing the latest technology advances on the market. In terms of a spectrophotometer for measuring the transmission and reflection of colour, I use a Barbiera Spectro LFP, which is fully automated and as good as it comes for the quality necessary for wide-format output.
RIPs
The advances in RIP technology, especially over the last two years, has made a tangible impact on the industry, and with competition now so close when it comes to physical hardware, this is an area that will continue to see improvement going forward.
There are many flavours of RIPs on the market; some come free with your wide-format printer like Rasta Link with Mimaki and VersaWorks with Roland DG. Most of the free one’s are limited in some way and do not allow for full profiling of the media, they also have less colour manipulation capabilities, which is not to say that the output is inferior in any way.
If you are thinking about upgrading your RIP and want to take advantage of the very latest technology, then brands such as Onyx, Caldera, Wasatch, Ergo Soft, and Shiraz are all doing interesting things with the development of their platforms”
If you are thinking about upgrading your RIP and want to take advantage of the very latest technology, then brands such as Onyx, Caldera, Wasatch, Ergo Soft, and Shiraz are all doing interesting things with the development of their platforms in line with the wider technological development of wide-format printers. Also one or two specialist RIP technology developers such as GMG colour are now coming to the fore, dealing with textile printing and full external colour control. This latter software gives one central point to control a variety of devices and ink technologies such as solvent, UV, dye-sublimation, latex, and even offset, achieving exactly the colour you want on a consistent basis.
The outer edge
There are certainly whisperings on the colour management grapevine that the technology is set for some big steps forward in terms of ease-of-use and flexibility, but in the meantime getting some fundamentals right will immediately make a big difference.
The most important step of colour management on the RIP is to profile the media, resolutions and speeds you need, after this you should have a balanced profile that gives you ink control, true blacks and greys on CMYK and RGB images. All RIPs will let you choose the input profile, for example Euro, Fogra, Gracol, and Adobe RGB if you need to work to a standard. A lot of the new versions of RIPs also have an Adobe RIP engine now they remain more compliant with the latest software.
GMG Color has launched a series of cutting edge products aimed at allowing sign-
makers and print-service-providers to achieve perfect colour reproduction, even
on difficult materials
All RIPs will also allow you to control RGB and CMYK workflows, although sometimes this is not enough for you to be able to hit the Pantone and spot colours you need even though some 99 percent of RIPs provide the option for colour replacement or let you use defined spot colours.
A good example is that with Onyx and other RIPs you can add a spot colour or scan a real life objects with ‘Eye-One’, this can then be assigned a name that the RIP recognises when sent as a spot colour from Adobe Illustrator or other packages.
Most RIPs will also let you output the Pantone chart or spot colour chart so that you can see the limitations of the printer’s colour gamut. In this way you can replace the spot that is closer to the true colour you need.
True colours
If you are just using a basic colour management system and have aspirations to take on some bigger and more respected clients, then advances in this sector mean it is far less costly and much more of an advantage to upgrade. As I stated at the start of this article, the standards for perfect colour reproduction are becoming much higher and more wide-spread as hardware and end-user requirements evolve. Indeed, many smaller sign-makers are now losing regular contracts they once held because they cannot consistently meet these increasing standards. The conclusion is that getting to grips with the very latest in colour management software and staying on top of developments in this rapidly evolving sector will stand your company in good stead.
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