Available from X-Rite, the i1Pro 3 Plus can deliver improved measurements on substrates such as vinyl, fabrics, and transparent films
Keeping Colour in Line
Delivering high quality jobs at the first effort is a sure-fire way of ensuring that customers come back to you with more work, time and time again. While investment in a quality wide-format printer will certainly allow you to achieve quality print, you need to think further when it comes to accuracy.
Matching colour to customer requirements is absolutely crucial in printed work, especially with those jobs that carry iconic brands and colours; think the bold red of Coca-Cola or the easily recognisable purple of NatWest. Get this wrong and you risk not only this job but almost certainly repeat business.
Here, SignLink takes a closer look at colour management products and analyses how these solutions can help you increase accuracy across wide-format print projects of all shapes and sizes.
A Critical Component
First, we look to X-Rite, a company based in the US that provides colour measurement and management products to the industry. Dr. Leila Khatai, marketing director for the EMEA region at X-Rite, says as digital printing continues to grow, many companies are moving beyond traditional media to create artwork on substrates like wood, acrylic, textiles, and backlit materials. Khatai explains while the results can be beautiful, achieving exceptional print quality on these materials can be challenging.
“International Colour Consortium (ICC) colour management means having a workflow that is predictable, consistent, and repeatable from capture through to proofing and final output,” Khatai says, adding: “To achieve a colour managed workflow, you need to calibrate your devices and create an ICC profile for every component, including the camera, monitor, projector, scanner, and printer.
X-Rite’s i1Profiler software comes bundled with the i1Pro 3 (pictured) and i1Pro 3 Plus measuring devices
“For the best colour results, you need to calibrate each device that is contributing to your workflow to ensure it is accurately reproducing colour. Next you need to create ICC profiles to ensure they're speaking the same language. With an ICC profile generation tool, you can create profiles for all types of input and output devices, including conventional and digital RGB, CMYK, and CMYK+ (up to four additional colours) printing systems on a wide range of printing substrates so you can trust your colour on any device.”
O Factoid: An International Colour Consortium (ICC) profile is a file that describes how to correctly convert image files from one colour space to anotherO
With this, Khatai draws attention to some of the latest and most recent solutions available from X-Rite. Khatai begins with i1Profiler, an ICC profile generation tool that comprises a suite of tools designed to create high-end profiles for all of a user’s devices. The latest version of the i1Profiler software offers new features such as ‘Spot Colour Compare’ that includes Pantone colour look up, ‘Black Generation’ for improved shadow grey balance and full control over black width, as well as a ‘Workflow’ option to load and save your work from a custom location.
i1Profiler software comes bundled with the i1Pro 3 and i1Pro 3 Plus measuring devices. Khatai says the large aperture i1Pro 3 Plus can deliver improved measurements on many substrates used in sign-making and similar work, including vinyl, fabrics, transparent films, corrugated, and backlit for improved print quality.
“The polarisation option eliminates the reflections that can otherwise make it difficult to measure textured and shiny surfaces,” Khatai explains, continuing: “The transmissive measurement mode allows for the calibration and profiling of backlit materials.”
Khatai goes on to say that both the i1iO for i1Pro 3 and i1Pro 3 Plus can be added to a workflow at any time. The i1iO reads more than 500 patches per minute in scanning mode to quickly create custom profiles and has a robotic arm that attaches to the device and moves it over each patch on the test chart. It can adjust in height to accommodate media up to 10mm thick, and up to 33mm thick with the optional Z-axis spacer.
“If you deal with both flexible and rigid substrates like so many in the wide-format world, you’ll appreciate the i1iO’s ability to quickly measure a multi-page target by simply defining three location points, then instructing the software to operate in either a single-scan or dual-scan mode,” Khatai comments.
“Even if the printer produces a low-resolution print, the i1iO table can automatically perform what could be a tedious manual measurement task.”
Khatai goes on to say that as colour affects every workflow, only investment in a quality and reliable colour management product will allow companies in the wide-format and sign-making sectors to produce consistent, repeatable colour in their various applications.
“Managing colour is critical from design through pre-press, production, and quality assurance,” Khatai says, adding: “From specifying the proper Pantone colours in the design phase, to using the i1Pro 3 for characterising and proof validation to the eXact 2 portable spectrophotometer in the pressroom, each tool is critical in any colour-managed workflow. Capturing spectral data not only ensures colour standards are clearly communicated, but also provides an accurate way to measure and control printed results.”
Save Time and Money
Elsewhere, Papergraphics provides the sign-making and wide-format print markets with both hardware and software solutions. Dean Sutton, one of the technical experts at Papergraphics, says that the value of quality colour management cannot be overstated.
Papergraphics offers both hardware and software solutions to the market
“Simply put, a quality colour management software ensures consistent colour reproduction across different devices and media,” Sutton explains, adding: “This is important in industries like graphic design and general wide-format printing as it enables you to reproduce colours as intended, and also helps to prevent colour shifts.
Simply put, a quality colour management software ensures consistent colour reproduction across different devices and media”
“In turn, this will save you money as it will minimise both labour time spent colour matching and also help to cut the physical media or ink waste from reprints and adjustments.”
As for the dangers of not having up-to-date software in place updating older systems, Sutton says this can lead to unnecessary errors in production that will cost sign-makers and wide-format print companies in terms of both time and money.
“Outdated or low-quality software could result in inaccurate colour reproduction which would be very problematic for industries such as graphic design, sign printing and photography,” Sutton comments.
“This can be a very costly issue if jobs are rejected or projects are delayed due to colour discrepancies. Most brands have exacting colour standards for their logos or artwork style, so anything less just won’t do.
“As the design software, digital printers, and monitor hardware evolves, so too should the colour management software used to keep all colour profiles and compliance calibration in check so that you are getting the most out of your workflow.”
Dean Sutton, a technical expert at Papergraphics, says quality colour management software is a must for sign-makers and wide-format printers
So, how can Papergraphics help? Sutton says the company recommends Xrite and Barbieri for a customer’s spectrophotometer needs as he says these popular options will allow users to create, manage, and re-calibrate all your colour profiles. They also run spot and customer colour verifications and can come with their own software.
“This opens the doorway for RIP independent colour management but can also work seamlessly with the integrated colour management engines in RIPs such as Onyx and Caldera,” Sutton says, adding: “Any RIP that has built-in colour management capabilities can utilise these spectrophotometers.
“It’s something that we get asked about quite a bit, and we’re always happy to give advice to our customers in order to help them get the best out of their workflow.”
Improve Performance
Casting the net further still, while its name may suggest otherwise, Service Offset Supplies (SOS) offers colour management software suitable for use in wide-format print. Qualified to issue Fogra certification, a measure of both colour quality and consistency which is a valuable yet relatively underused accreditation, SOS is well placed to offer advice and solutions.
“Our goal is to improve performance to make colour output more accurate and consistent across devices, which is vital now that most printers use more than one technology to print,” SOS technical manager, Omran Anwar, says, adding: “This starts in the pre-press department, typically making sure colour profiles are being used correctly.
SOS technical manager Omran Anwar
“Ink is a major factor. The pigments in each ink are different, and there are other chemical characteristics which are more important than density. No two inks are the same. Wide-format machines and proofers often need adjustment to hit the desired profile, despite high levels of automation and good RIP systems.
“We also look at efficiency. A colour audit by SOS can lead to reduced costs through lower consumable use – especially ink and toner – but also by reducing waste.”
Looking at solutions, the Alwan ColorHub works by manipulating the way separations are created and allows users to reduce ink and toner consumption of presses without any visible change to the printed colours. Anwar says using less ink means the job dries faster, with no set off, and is easier to print.
SOS also stocks a suite of GMG products including GMG ColorServer, a central hub offering set-up with three solutions for different application scenarios; conventional, digital, and multi-colour. These all come with OpenColor, an award-winning profiling tool.
“These products, plus our specialist across-the-board colour knowledge, make colour standardisation a reality, with more consistent quality, lower ink costs, less waste, and greater production efficiency,” Anwar comments.
“Colour management should be the cornerstone of our industry; we sell colour. Walk into any printer and the chances are you will see them proudly displaying their ISO certificate, or perhaps something to say how green they are; but how often do you see them displaying credentials which prove they are good at printing?
“Printing has evolved. Years ago we only had to worry about litho presses, now that’s just one type of printing process used to produce print. We now have digital presses, in all their incarnations, and wide-format printers in all their permutations.
“Colour is more and more important. But it is also the key for consistent print quality and more important for customers that have multiple print devices and processes.”
These closing remarks from Anwar can be taken as both advice and a warning: skimp on colour management at your own risk! The good news is that there are plenty of clever and innovative tools and software products available to wide-format print companies and sign-makers to help them achieve the colours their customers desire.
Combine these with high-quality print machinery and you will be well on the way to delivering accurate and stunning printed applications of all kinds to clients across all manner of markets.
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