Has Your Pressroom Outgrown its Current Colour Control Solution?

Why You Need Colour Quality Management In Print?

Print buyers and Brand owners are requiring continuous improvement in colour quality as they look to maintain their brand identity with unique design and colours across product lines. Differentiation is key to brands and they are pressuring printers to produce their work with extreme consistency and accuracy in colour.

Printers are being asked to prove their accuracy over a job run by providing detailed reports that shows the printed results within the agreed set of tolerances. Achieving colour predictability and repeatability through a print process requires more than having the best press operators.

To maintain colour within the customer’s specification, with consistency, run to run and job to job, whilst keeping and eye on waste and productivity requires a high level of care. It is not impossible, but there should be a plan to implement best practices in the press room.

Has your press room outgrown its current colour control solution?

We have identified key areas for you to look at in order to answer the above.

• Printers complain that it is difficult to maintain consistency over a press run and across multiple presses
• Too much time is lost with Make Ready trying to get the colour right
• There are many customer complaints that the printed package is not within their colour tolerance or specification
• Brand owners and print buyers are starting to ask for reports to prove their job was run within tolerance or to 'spec'
• The current colour measurement devices and reporting mechanisms cannot provide what your customer is asking for
• The measurement devices being used are at ‘end of life’ - cannot be serviced, supported or recertified
• When questions are raised about why one press or one press operator is better or worse than another it is difficult to provide any hard data to prove why or what or where the problems are
• If your business has grown through mergers or take overs and you now have multiple sites, each site might have different ideas, goals and colour control tools - this reduces your ability to provide uniform reports with centralised targets and standards

How can you plan to implement Best Practice Colour Quality Management in Print?

You have high expectations and you need change now! Implementing new procedures, with training requires a culture change and should be driven from the top down (From senior management to the workers on the shop floor).

Once you have team ‘buy in’ with best practices, your colour control procedures will be easier to ‘grow’ and will become useful to the press room staff and all stake holders (Management, Production, Quality Dept, Supervisors, Press Operators, Sales staff, Customer Service, etc).

Everyone is then aware of the correct goals for customer expectations. Quality measurement in print and reporting will aid in identifying issues and problems that can nipped in bud before they become out of control. 

Where to start?

• 
  You will need to review your current and complete colour and print quality procedures and processes. This may require a bit of background work and there could be parts of the workflow and reporting that can be used with your new solution
• Do a study to find out currently what works and what does not. If you have multiple locations software in the ‘Cloud’ with Analytics will be required
• What users or staff currently participate in the quality in print process? Who else should be included in the new solution? What are their needs? It is likely this will mean new and extra work for some staff. You will need to carefully manage the introduction and usage of any new ‘solution’ so that it is effective and gets used properly.
• Create a vision of what your 'perfect' quality in print process would look like. You then might need to step back from colour perfection to production reality. There is limitations and constraints in any print production process. Therefore you cannot set tolerances too tight or too low. Do not be afraid to reach out and speak with trusted industry colleagues and suppliers to see what can be provided and what is available. In your vision who would be included, what integration is required and what are your reporting requirements?
• Your new solution will require a plan with a time line for implementation and 'deliverables'. Secure support from top level management to ensure funding and buy in throughout the organisation.

To realise the full benefits of printer calibration and printer colour management please contact us at info@colourgraphicservices.com

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Prints Looking Muddy and Dark - Why is That?

My prints don’t match my monitor? They look muddy and dark! And I have calibrated my monitor and profiled my printer! Why is this colour management thing not working?

We often hear this type of complaint and statement. Do not worry, you are not alone in making these comments.

But why is this happening? Ok, settle a little, and let's discuss what could be going on here.

What does colour management do and provide?

It can be easy to generalise, point and wag the finger and say I told you so, but first understand that colour management (CM) is an ‘enabling’ technology.

• CM enables proof to print ‘matching’ or monitor to print ‘matching’
• CM enables predictable colour conversion (think RGB to CMYK or CMYK to RGB, for example)
• CM enables predictable colour print output (such as RGB photo print, digital production print, wide format signage and display print, offset and flexo print to name a few)
• CM enables RGB capture to monitor colour predictability.

CM enables the above scenarios and but usually requires some input and decision making from you.

AND, importantly, CM will NOT fix BAD colour. If your image capture is under exposed, dark, CM will not fix it, BUT it will communicate the under exposed, dark capture accurately.

CM enables accurate and predicable colour communication, device to device. Fixing bad colour is up to you or someone with image retouching skills, etc.

Just because you have calibrated your monitor and using an ICC profile for your printer output does not guarantee predictable colour.

Yes, but why are my prints looking muddy and dark?

It could be your expectations, combined with a few other things.

Calibrating your monitor is the first step, but this should be done with the correct settings in mind for what you are trying to produce. Settings such as monitor brightness, colour temperature and gamma will all have an influence on the final calibration result. AND, yes you should use a monitor calibration solution from a reputable manufacturer.

Are you looking to obtain a good match between your monitor and your printed output?

You cannot just hold your print next to the monitor and look back and forth to see whether their is a good colour ‘match’ or not. You need to put on your thinking cap, apply some ‘science’ and have realistic expectations about the results that can be achieved.

As stated, properly calibrating your monitor is the first step - but this is just the first step. You need to ‘tell’ your monitor how you would like to print your image - this is called soft proofing. In PhotoShop you would use the View -> Proof Setup option. This will provide options for setting the correct print profile, rendering intent, white point simulation, etc. The same settings used to print your result.

In addition to this you will need to use an ISO 3664 viewing system to confirm your actual print result with that of the monitor soft proof (monitor print simulation).

What!! I hear you exclaim, I need to spend more money?

Well monitor to print colour ‘matching’ does not just ‘happen’. Think carefully what is going on here.

You are viewing a printed result from reflected light, and this lighting should be made up of the same properties as the measurement for your ICC print profile, which is D50 (daylight spectral quality at a correlated colour temp of 5000k).

Then on the other hand you are looking at a monitor, with the displayed image. The monitor is made up emissive RGB light.

We are talking about TWO different viewing and lighting events here and we are trying to TRICK the brain the visualise, check and analyse the result. AND we want both these to look the same or colour match!

This is where we need to have realistic expectations!

CM has enabled soft proofing since ICC profiles became the standardised way for devices to communicate colour.
Soft Proofing is not perfect - it has improved markedly in recent times, but time, equipment, set up and some expense is required in order to achieve an acceptable result.

Are your prints really that muddy and dark? Some point to consider…

• Use a good standard evaluation test image to colour analysis
• View and look at the printed result in isolation of the monitor under the correct viewing conditions (ISO 3664) - if not available use daylight but not direct sunlight
• What are settings used for monitor calibration? Your monitor may still be too bright to enable soft proofing
• Does your software allow for an accurate print simulation on the monitor? Photoshop and Acrobat have functions for this
• Where is your monitor placed? (Not placed in from of the window) Is it the brightest thing in the room?
• How much influence is there from ambient light and brightly coloured walls, furnishings?
• Am I wearing a brightly coloured top which is reflecting ‘colour’ onto the print?

We have not covered all the details here but we feel that the fundamentals of soft proofing and printed result expectations should now be a little clearer.

For more information on setting up your Colour Management system, on site Colour Consulting and Colour Management training contact us at info@colourgraphicservices.com

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Controlling the Colour Variables in your Workflow - Lighting

We often get asked about how to control colour in the workflow.

Everyone’s workflow is different - digital photo print output, digital production print, wide format display and signage print, commercial offset print, packaging and label flexo print, are just a few of the different workflows we encounter and support in our working day.

Whatever your workflow, in order to maintain predictable, consistent colour quality in print does require that you follow some basic rules. This will help you remove and/or reduce the variables within acceptable tolerances.

One of the easiest things to fix is to have controlled and standardised lighting for viewing and assessing your photo prints, proofs or printed results. Colour management is based on D50 lighting, for measurement and for viewing/lighting conditions.

This is not just someones idea - it is an international standard - ISO 3664:2009. This does require investment in a ‘viewing system’ but it is money well spent.

A viewing system that meets ISO 3664 will remove the ambiguity when visually assessing and analysing printed results.

If you are comparing your ‘prints’ to the same image on your monitor (in PhotoShop or Acrobat for example) you will require a calibrated monitor and a standardised viewing system.

This will confirm your soft proof (image on the monitor) is accurate to the print. 

Attention should be given to the type and quality of the monitor, how the monitor is calibrated, monitor surrounds (wall colour, etc), using a monitor hood and the ambient lighting. Softproofing is worthy of a complete article and can be a lengthy discussion, so we will cover that in another story or blog.

ISO 3664 does provide guidelines for ambient light - i.e. up to around 500 lux, but still with D50. D50 is not just about 5000K tubes or bulbs. The colour temperature is just part of it. It is the spectral quality of the lighting that is important.

D50 ambient lighting is entirely possible by way of LED lighting, tubes and bulbs. If your ambient lighting in your work place is varied with windows, halogen down lights, office warm white ‘fluros’, brightly coloured walls and furnishings around the monitor(s) you will need to eliminate or change some these.

For example D50 ‘fluro’ tubes are available to fit standard size ceiling fluro fixtures. D50 LED tubes are also now available and provide greater longevity and massive savings in running costs.

What are the basic recommendations?

• Use D50 lighting for assessing colour in printed results
• Take control of your ambient lighting and surrounds
• Use a good quality monitor* - calibrate the monitor and use a monitor hood

*with monitors we always say you only get what you pay for!

Want to learn more? 

Contact us at info@colourgraphicservices.com for colour management training and complete colour management solutions.

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