Colour Management - I
"Trial and Error" or Key to Economic Success?
With quality demands from customers increasing, shorter production times and fast job changes, the importance of colour management takes on a key role in the economic future of many printshops. Additionally, new technology such as Heidelberg's Anicolor, which was unveiled in April at IPEX 2006, enables fast and easy control of the colour process to achieve the expected results. The ability to print high quality products at an attractive price is often the deciding factor in winning jobs and keeping long term customer relationships.
With quality demands from customers increasing, shorter production times and fast job changes, the importance of colour management takes on a key role in the economic future of many printshops. Additionally, new technology such as Heidelberg's Anicolor, which was unveiled in April at IPEX 2006, enables fast and easy control of the colour process to achieve the expected results. The ability to print high quality products at an attractive price is often the deciding factor in winning jobs and keeping long term customer relationships.
For many users, colour management means simply ensuring that the
print run matches the proof. This is generally achieved through a
combination of the printer's know-how, some technical aids and
an investment in machinery and time. In doing so, the colour
settings on the press must be reset for each job to get as close as
possible to the desired result. In common practice press settings
cannot be standardised and therefore cannot be reliably repeated
"at the touch of a button". This results in
a dramatic loss of flexibility and a competitive
disadvantage through inconsistent results from job to job and
printer to printer. Of course every printshop finds a way to
match proof and printed product, but the efficiency of this
procedure is crucial in view of the significant changes to job
portfolios today.
The key to colour management lies in the standardisation of manufacturing and integration of production steps in prepress and the pressroom.
Delivering fast, reliable quality
One of the core elements in colour management is the link between prepress and press - using the ink presettings delivered from Prepress and then taking the measured differences on the printed sheet again to optimise the prepress in return. The production requirements of the press must ideally be taken into account as early as the proof creation stage. The ideal approach is to control the colour workflow from the point of view of the print process.
The key to colour management lies in the standardisation of manufacturing and integration of production steps in prepress and the pressroom.
Delivering fast, reliable quality
One of the core elements in colour management is the link between prepress and press - using the ink presettings delivered from Prepress and then taking the measured differences on the printed sheet again to optimise the prepress in return. The production requirements of the press must ideally be taken into account as early as the proof creation stage. The ideal approach is to control the colour workflow from the point of view of the print process.
Heidelberg offers this as "Prinect Colour Solutions".
It standardises and automates the production process. All
components in the process are perfectly integrated and coordinated,
enabling seamless communication to the devices and back again to
the main workflow system.
To be continued in the next issue:
• The Benefits of Colour Management
• Using "Minispots"
Further Information:
Soeren Lange
Product Manager - Prepress & Workflow
Tel. +61 3 9205 4227
Fax. +61 3 9205 4211
Email:
Soeren.Lange@heidelberg.com
Prinect - a modular, scalable, open system
Prinect integrates existing and newly developed products throughout the entire production workflow. Prinect Overview
