The number of acquisitions we’ve gone through for the Social Print Experiment is dwindling down, and now it seems like we can look at some things to fine tune our production workflow.
One of the things I would like to explore more is color management for digital presses. Our MGI DP60 does a very good job of color management, but I want to take it to a higher level and be able to match colors when our customers are using one print device to proof to and then sending us their work to produce, on a completely different color gamut than how the proof looks. Ken ends up ripping his hair out (although he’ll tell you it’s not a bald spot but a cowlick, whatever that is) trying to match color from say the Xerox 700 (at a customer site) to the DP60.
I’d like to hear from you what you’re using for color management, and for how long you’ve been using it. From your input, we’ll test several programs and make a choice, reviewing it as we go through the different programs. Leave your comments below for suggestions.
Thanks!
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been in production printing my entire career and color management has always been a hot topic. I first entered the business in a commercial print franchise in the south east…..during the CLC1000/Xerox DC12 days. This was when digital color printing was still the wild wild west and everyone was trying to get their arms around desktop publishing. In 1999 I went to work for Xerox Corporation and held numerous technical roles focused on production mono and color publishing engines and software solutions. Color consistency and how to address it on digital devices always proved to be very challenging for our customers. As a result of this, most of my customers would often times choose the path of “pleasing color” for digital, rather than look for a tool or commit to a workflow solution that would automate the color management process.
During the last 3 years of my career at Xerox, I was apart of the iGen program providing application support and project management from a presales and implementation perspective. During this time, I began implementing the ORIS Press Matcher solution in my customer accounts in order to enable color consistency on the iGen as well as other digital manufactures engines (HP, OCE, etc). Based on my experience and success with CGS and the ORIS Press Matcher suite, I decided to leave Xerox in the spring of 2009 to focus on GCS sales in the west supporting the digital print market. In 2009 CGS experienced significant growth with the ORIS Press Matcher solution. It has been a huge success for solving challenges associated with day to day printing in the short run color market and being able to seamless transfer print runs from offset to digital and visa versa. The ORIS solution enables operations to eliminate subjective color tweaks on digital output devices and enables customers to run their digital presses by the numbers….the way any good business should be run.
For more information on the ORIS Press Matcher solution and links to several case studies please check out http://www.cgsusa.com
For color management…before you look at technologies, you first need to establish a print characteristic/color target.
Knowing your target will help you to determine the best method and tools to hit it.
Since you work in a distributed printing environment where prepress and scans from a variety of sources must conform to a common print characteristic, the best strategy is to target an industry defined specification where the press color aligns to the proof.
This blog post explains the various target options:
http://qualityinprint.blogspot.com/2009/01/press-and-proof-alignment.html
This post explains some of the basic steps:
http://qualityinprint.blogspot.com/2009/01/aligning-proof-and-presswork.html
Your goal is commendable, but in practice it won’t happen often. In order to produce good, consistent color from a press three things must happen:
1. The press must be in good working order – calibrated, focused, linearized, etc.
2. The press must be in density, which is affected by the age of consumables, the cleanliness of the press, the printing environment, primarily ambient humidity.
3. The press must be profiled.
While you can cover these things in your own shop, the chance that a printer somewhere else that you are trying to match is also in proper condition is very low. Matching color between machines in your own shop is difficult enough. Matching color to a machine over which you have no control is a shot in the dark and rarely happens. If a customer wants you to match their printer keep their expectations low. Good Luck!