Tools for better managing digitally printed colour already exist, in the shape of the ISO 12647 standard that litho printers are increasingly turning to, writes Laurel Brunner.
The best argument in years for why printers should colour manage their workflows recently came to my attention: ‘Savings are irrelevant it’s just the right thing to do to get the most out of press investments and protect our competitive position.’ Any discussion about colour management begins with what it can help your business achieve: greater profitability, enhanced return on capital expenditures and customer loyalty. Whether you are producing packaging on demand, posters, direct mail or publications, sound colour management is about sound financial management. And yet still too few companies fully appreciate this. Too few think about how to manage colour in their digital workflows for accurate and consistent output. More seriously they don’t always appreciate the cost of not doing so. Andrew Hodson, sales and marketing director for Icon World, recently describing how Icon produced all nationwide signage and dressing for the London 2012 Olympics said that his production staff were ‘knee deep in proofs we managed our colour by trial and error’. Icon made a profit on the project, but how much more money might they have made? Predictable common colour appearance across multiple digital output paths and for 42 brand colours would have saved Icon a fortune. So why would a company not want to be able to colour manage their workflows? The most common reasons are that people don’t know what is possible and that they are put off by the fact that colour management can be a complex business, particularly for digital presses supported by manufacturers who don’t fully understand it. Paul Sherfield lead consultant with the Missing Horse Colour Consultancy reckons it is ‘lack of knowledge and training, coupled with some systems where the colour management tools are opaque and/or counter intuitive’. Most high end digital presses can be configured to match offset but it isn’t necessarily the case that they are. It isn’t simple and it takes training, committment and some investment in control technologies. None of these is reason to jeopardise a business’s future by ignoring the advantages of colour management.
Colour Standards
There is no lack of technology or advice, particularly in the UK market where we have some of the best colour consultants in the world. The UK is also a major contributor to ISO standards for colour management, such as ISO 12647-2, the process control standard for offset printing. Not specifically designed for digital printers, this standard is the benchmark for commercial print colour quality worldwide. There are more than 1,000 printers worldwide certified for compliance to ISO 12647-2, including many digital printers. They go for certification in order to demonstrate that they can achieve common colour appearance across workflows, often to appease offset customers. Christinger Partners in Switzerland is certified for ISO 12647-2 output on a digital press. Chief executive officer Karlheinz Kaiser said that ‘customers are used to offset quality and colours and now we can guarantee they’ll get them with digital’. The ISO 12647-2 standard reflects years of accumulated knowledge from around the world, so it is a cheap route to business improvement. There is no need for trial and error because the standard lays out what you need to know and do, and it was written by people who have gone through the trial and error for you.
ISO 12647-2 & Control
Achieving certification to ISO 12647-2 is also a means of tightening up general business management, because process management and business performance principles drive the UK scheme for compliance. Investing in ISO 12647-2 compliance is a good starting point for many companies who want to improve their colour management. Auditing a workflow in order to achieve a particular goal helps identify quantifiable weaknesses in the business. Control is the foundation of ISO 12647 and of a couple of other ISO standards that are in the pipeline, but not due for imminent publication. The guiding principle is that unless you can control something you cannot measure it, and with digital colour management measurement is fundamental. Control starts with the three Cs of colour management: Calibration, Characterisation (often referred to as profiling) and Conversion.
Calibration
Calibration starts with monitor calibration, so you need a monitor that can be calibrated in the first place and this is not true of all monitors. The monitor must be set up in a room with low ambient light no more than 32 lux, with a white point of 5000º Kelvin and with a luminous intensity of 80-120 candelas per square metre. Once you have a calibrated monitor, you can be sure that the colours it presents are accurate. If you want to take things further (and why not since now you know how) get your customers to use calibrated monitors as well – et voilà, no more arguments about why colours do not look the same. Output device calibration is just as important. Start with some basic maintenance (check print heads, linearise the engine so that a 40% magenta is always and only a 40% magenta, etc) and consider which substrates you most commonly use and on which presses. Think about output resolutions, screening and frequencies if relevant and any other factors that influence final output. Device calibration routines are beyond the scope of this article but your digital press operator or supplier should know what to do. Do not let them fob you off with a standard profile for the press. This is a meaningless generic.
Conversion
Once all devices in the workflow are calibrated you have the basis for creating ICC device profiles. The device profile is a summary of the device’s characteristics and behaviour based on the colour values it produces, either RGB or CMYK. This data provides the basis for calculating colour values that ensure colours viewed on an RGB monitor and a CMYK print are consistent, and that they are consistent across imaging methods. The importance of accurate measurement and control cannot be understated and although the processes appear to be complex, once the workflow is established, colour management can be automatic. There is no doubt that colour management is a complex business but the investment can pay off handsomely if you get it right. And after all, what price survival?
Who to talk to?
The most important name when it come to measurement is X-Rite, developers of a huge range of colour matching products. X-Rite is best known for the i1 range of colour management tools which include hardware and software. X-Rite is also the driving force behind the CxF colour exchange data format (soon to be published as ISO 17972) and the PantoneLIVE colour communication and control tool, that lives in the cloud. Colour management tools are also available from traditional graphic arts manufacturers such as Agfa, Kodak, Fujifilm and Esko Graphics. All of these companies have software that supports offset and digital printing workflows. There are also many small organisations keen to sell you their expertise and technologies. Mellow Colour, Bodoni, the Missing Horse Consultancy, and Neil Barstow Consulting are all worth talking to, as, I would like to believe, is my own consultancy, Digital Dots. Whoever you talk to make sure you involve your production team as well as management and key customers, so that everyone in the workflow understands the project objectives from the start. Basic colour management education doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. Implementing a colour managed digital workflow will provide your business with quality control, profitability and a competitive edge that’s priceless.
