Leap into a new spectrum
Modern print companies are facing an ongoing battle to win business.
While some have opted to reduce prices in an effort to bring in new
work, others have invested in new print equipment boasting impressive
production credentials in order to take on new work.
However, another option that is not always the first thought in
printers’ mind is how they address colour management issues within the
production process. And while such technology will enable printers to
take more control over stabilising the output from the various devices
they run—from large-format inkjet to offset litho—it will also help them
ensure that the final product they produce is of a higher standard than
competitors.
With this in mind, what are some of the latest colour management
solutions on offer to the market and how can such software help printers
get a firmer grip on their business in what is a highly competitive
market?
Crucial role
One company heavily involved in this sector of the industry is Colour
Engine, which has a wide-range of tailor made solutions on offer to the
market. Managing director Mark Anderton says being able to offer a
certain level of output to customers is of great importance in the
modern industry and that colour management software is ‘crucial’ in
achieving such standards.
“Colour management is one of the areas where printers can
differentiate,” says Anderton, who adds: “Although we can help clients
save money and speed up processes on production, but what we think is
more interesting is using colour management as a sales differentiator.
“If you are a commercial printer and have a very wide range of output
devices, getting the best visual appearance from the devices for
marketing campaigns is a massive differentiator, as not that many people
can do it. The ability to have a good understanding of the core
management means you can pitch for work that others cannot.”
Leading on from this, Anderton highlights some of the solutions
available from Colour Engine through its strategic business
partnerships. First among these is Alwa, which specialises in colour
management and, in Anderton’s words, has a, ‘very advanced’ set of
solutions that Colour Engine installs, train customers on, and supports.
Another solution available through Colour Engine is Remote Director,
which is a colour accurate monitor proofing tool that can be used in
both the studio and press room environments.
Colour Engine explains that the horror stories it has
heard over the years inspired the clever cartoons on its websites that
showcase only too well that if your business is print, then you should
probably make sure your output is the right colour from first to last
sheet
Anderton goes on to say that while these products do offer effective
solutions to printers, it is more important that they understand exactly
what they want out of a product before investing in new software.
“Anybody can buy software, but more important than buying the right
software is knowing how to use the product,” Anderton says, adding: “The
software means nothing without understanding what you want to achieve
and how to save money, and we think that is a particular skill-set that
Colour Engine can help with.
Anybody can buy software, but more important than buying the right software is knowing how to use the product”
“We can help clients understand if the software is going to save them
money and relevant, and we can explain how it is going to work and what
we are going to do to ensure it achieves these targets. It is a bit of a
paradox, but, for us, it is about services and looking after your
clients.”
Long-term focus
Toby Burnett, managing director at GMG UK, picks up on this point,
stating that ensuring colour replication across the print production
process is ‘crucial’ for printers—especially with customers now a lot
more savvy about colour standards.
Burnett explains: “Colour is important from the moment someone
conceptualises what they want something to look like, through to when
the product is printed—they want the colour to carry on right through
the process. However, this doesn’t necessarily end with one product; the
customer may want other things printed the same colour. For example, a
local car dealership may want letterheads, business cards and
point-of-sale material printed, and you have to ensure colour is the
same across all products.
“Colour is important from the moment someone
conceptualises what they want something to look like, through to when
the product is printed,” says Toby Burnett, managing director at GMG UK
“Colour management has two very important places—at the place where you
actually create the concept and getting that into the right space, as
well as in the production process itself. All devices produce colour
differently and it is up to the colour management soft-ware to ensure
they all produce the same colour.”
Burnett goes on to explain that with print companies using a range of
different technologies in the modern industry, colour management across
these devices can be a tricky process. However, he says GMG offers
patented technology that will allow printer to do just this.
He expands: “At the profile stage, we take a device, analyse how it
prints, and by changing its CMYK values, we get it to match a known
printing standard. This is fine at the start, but after some time, the
devices will change their colour output due to environmental issues such
as temperature as well as other considerations like substrate type.
“Our unique position is that we have a calibration profile that targets
the original value we had with the printer and we can bring a device
back to the same colour condition it was in when we first profiled it.
“Our big USP is our 11,000 systems around the world; they are all
capable of calibrating to the same colour space so that they all match
each other. This allows them to share their profile with other companies
in their supply chain to ensure colour remains the same across the
process. We can basically take any device and calibrate it in the same
way that we do a proofing system.”
Trail blazers
Brunett’s comments are indicative of just how big
the market for colour management systems have become. And while there
are a myriad of providers on the market offering tailored solutions,
there are also some big guns that moved quickly early on in the sector’s
history to provide a solution to a problem which has only become worse
in recent years. This is namely that many printers are now having to
cope with providing a myriad of print products to a single customer.
This often means using large-format inkjet devices, digital toner
printers, and offset litho technology to complete a single job that
could span everything from banners to brochures—with each and every
print needing to have the same exact shade of Pantone specific brand
colour to the naked eye.
One of the first companies to deal with this issue was EFI. Its field
and channel marketing manager, Kerry Maloney, believes that colour
management is becoming an increasingly important consideration for print
companies due to this specific challenge: “The commercial printer has
always had colour management in his or her environment, but historically
this was limited to just the proofing stage. That all changed when
printers started to bring digital print into their environment, and
especially when they started to bring inkjet technology into their
businesses. Print buyers and end-users then became familiar with
standardisation and those companies that could offer a properly
standardised print portfolio gained an edge over their competition, and
that remains true today.”
Maloney continues: “The way this sector is evolving is that people are
becoming more aware of the need for colour management and
standardisation at a quicker rate. What that means is that our software
has to get quicker, smarter, and easier to use so people can get that
time-to-colour down. The easier and quicker colour management software
is to use, the more likely people are to use it and the end product will
offer a better result.”
EFI’s Kerry Maloney is adamant about the vital
importance of colour management in meeting the demands of today’s print
buyers. A good example is the increasingly complex needs of fashion
retailers, which want incredibly high quality large-format prints to
provide atmosphere for their outlets
She highlights EFI’s Color Profiler Suite as one of the company’s
solutions to have been developed under this strategy. Describing this as
being ‘at the heart’ of EFI RIP technology, Color Profiler can be used
both in the cut-sheet environment as well as in wide-format through the
firm’s Fiery range.
Maloney comments: “Whether it is calibration, profiling or profile
editing, all of those functions are in Color Profiler. For example, a
commercial printer could be proofing a product for a litho press, while
also doing a wide-format job and a short-run digital cut-sheet product
to accompany the same campaign. EFI can manage these using the same
colour management technology.
“What is vital is that printers need to, as part of their offering,
illustrate they are printing to a specific colour and quality standard,
while explaining to customers the processes and software that underpins
it. This will give the print buyer confidence, as most today will expect
that every piece of print in your business will match that corporate
shade or Pantone colour. Some will even want to know the details of the
standards you adhere to and the tolerances you are printing to.”
Streamlined platform
Also active in the colour management sector is Fujifilm, another big gun
that offers a number of options to the market. John Davies, business
strategy and marketing manager, print production workflow solutions,
Fujifilm Graphic Systems Europe, likewise feels that it is critical for
modern-day colour management software to offer an easy-to-use system in
order to achieve results.
Davies explains: “In a commercial printing company, they may only have
one colour expert, and if they are away, others won’t know what to do if
things go wrong. Within our software, we’ve simplified the process so
that as long as you follow the procedure, you will have a colour
matching output on your press.
We’ve simplified the process so that as long as you follow the procedure, you will have a colour matching output on your press”
“We’ve stripped away many of the unnecessary settings that exist in many
products. We’ve taken away all that we can and given customers an
easier procedure to follow.”
One product in particular that has been developed using the easy-to-use
focus is XMF ColorPath, which Davies says can be used to manage colour
on both offset printing presses and digital devices.
Speaking about this solution, Davies says: “It has a focus on conforming
colour to the various ISO standards, so the product in general will
allow printers to bring new devices into the ISO standard quite easily.
Also, on an ongoing basis, it gives them tools to check and maintain
their printing standards, and if there is any deviation, then the
software will get this back into line.”
John Davies adds: “Colour management software provides printers with the assurance that they are printing at a good quality.”
Rounding up the importance of products like XMF ColorPath within the
printing process, Davies concludes: “Colour management software provides
printers with the assurance that they are printing at a good quality
and also allows them to show their clients that they are printing to ISO
standards. This can act as one of their benefits as not every company
is printing to certain colour standards.”
O Factoid: Arnold
J. Beckman and the National Technologies Laboratory (NTL) invented the
Beckman DU spectrophotometer in 1940. Although developed for the
chemicals industry, the technology was soon applied to the print
industry to measure colour accuracy. O
So, while some see colour management software as simply a way of
ensuring colour remains the same across the process, it seems such
solutions can go a lot deeper than this and could prove a crucial tool
in helping print-service-providers win new business and eveb break into
new markets. And with plenty of options available in the market place,
printers are not short of options when it comes to picking out the best
solution for their business.
Being able to produce vivid, repeatable, and richly
saturated colour opens up high-value areas of print such as coffee table
books. The pathway to this profit zone though has to be guided by a
properly calibrated, managed, and integrated software solution
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