You are in:
Colour Management : What’s remotely standard about the hard proofing process?
Dymo Europe’s marketing services manager, Tony Sterckx, found that ProofMaster significantly reduced the time between concept to final print
A remote proofing nirvana requires support for two hallmarks of good proofing: accuracy and consistency. The requirement for accuracy is clear: the proof must match the press. However, accuracy becomes more complex in remote proofing. The whole system is only as accurate as the combination of all its parts. Real standardisation of colour becomes critical.
Accuracy also needs to be assured across all remote locations. To achieve this, there must be a common reference standard. ICC profiles accurately define what an individual printer is doing, but they don’t define what that printer should be doing. You can be sure every printer is doing something differently. Multiply this across multiple printers in multiple locations and you get the picture. Pretty tough to make all devices match an unknown standard.
The ICC process takes the printer profile, combines it with the inkjet proofer profile and calculates conversion factors: a way of comparing colour output differences between the printer and the inkjet proofer. With only one output printer, you’re in luck. However, as more devices are added, the conversion file sent to all proofers can be compromised.
To output a file identically on two proofing systems, it is crucial for calibration, profiling and editing to be strictly separated. Think about printer drivers for each device model, defining how it is supposed to print when it leaves the manufacturing plant brand new. During system installation, each individual printer is recalibrated to this known reference standard. Periodically, a test chart print is measured with a spectrophotometer, automatically compared to last week’s chart and numerically quantified to correct any differences. With a known standard, all devices are commonly referenced, which allows them to behave identically. This helps ensure accuracy and repeatability.
Identical results
This approach also separates digital proof printer calibration from the characterisation of the printing press. Because inkjet printers at different locations already are tied to a common standard, the same press profile at each printer location achieves identical results. ICC profiles require separate profiles for each inkjet printer tied to each press to which it is compared. This can be difficult to manage.
Establishing individual printer profiles and maintaining closed-loop printer calibrations to those profiles ensures the printers always correspond to the colour space in which the profile was created. Thus, any inkjet printer belonging to the same printer family and operated with identical paper, inks and settings will always match any other printer in any time and in any place. To assure accuracy and repeatability of the entire system, it is important to recalibrate often and use the best possible media, inks and technical service personnel.
In a ‘separated device profile’ solution, the remote end receives the necessary profiles for printer calibration from the sender and merely needs to ensure that the output device has been calibrated correctly and operates within the specified tolerances. This calibration approach achieves identical colour performance across many locations for given combinations of proofing systems and target colour spaces. This is vital for obtaining identical results within close tolerances over an extended period or for proofing systems to produce exactly the same colour renditions at different locations.
Some systems provide the option to compute the original and target values directly in CMYK which means the black information in the original data is retained in the proof. This ensures that the visual match to the print remains identical, even after color transformation. The color space of a print job and its specific combination of printing process, press, ink and paper can be transformed to another colour space at any time and accurate colours can be reproduced under totally different printing conditions. For example, SWOP offset data can be automatically converted into PSR gravure data.
A further benefit of some device link approaches is their compatibility with ICC-based approaches. Well-designed solutions can even produce more consistent results from existing ICC profiles. The clear-cut separation of calibration, profiling and editing has the advantage that no colour management specialist is needed when using industry standards. If custom profiles are needed, a specialist only has to generate a single optimised colour profile once. In remote proofing scenarios, this single profile is distributed and used at all locations, which can greatly simplify the process of achieving and maintaining colour consistency across all locations.
Right tools, right controls
With the correct operating practices and products, such as referenced calibration, profile validation and media/consumables materials quality control, remote proofing results can be excellent. With these, users can achieve accurate and consistent local and remote proofs every day between any number of systems. With the right tools, controls and effort remote proofing systems can be much more than remotely standard.
In-house proofing cutting costs and boosts quality
By bringing every stage of colour proofing in-house, Dymo has boosted the efficiency of its designers, processes and equipment, while also reducing costs and recording significant returns on investment.
Dymo relied on ProofMaster technology to redesign its international packaging portfolio and marketing collaterals in record time and to ensure consistent colours throughout all production steps.
Marketing services manager, Dymo Europe, Tony Sterckx: “Dymo works with over 10 printing partners around the world and sign-off on our internal proofs involves dozens of intermediaries internally, across different locations. PerfectProof provided exactly the solution we needed, which included the ProofMaster state-of-the-art RIP, specialised media (carton, papers, canvas), and a series of ink-jet printers. Most importantly, ProofMaster significantly reduced the time between concept to final print while giving us proofs that are more reliable than anything we’d ever created before.”
ProofMaster helped Dymo meet and manage its complex colour-proofing needs, including controlling the colour accuracy on all packaging dummies.
PerfectProof Europe’s general manager, Mark Verbist, added: “ProofMaster integrated seamlessly into Dymo’s workflow and improved it. ProofMaster lets Dymo’s designers proof colour in-house and coordinate the process across locations by printing via hot folders to a central printer controlled by one administrator.”
External proofs, of which Dymo needed hundreds a month, represented between Euro 100 and Euro 150 apiece. By implementing the complete ProofMaster solution and adopting PerfectProof substrates Dymo eliminated that external cost instantly.
Tony explained: “It made complete economic sense, for the short and especially the long-term, to take all proofing in-house. Within six-months Dymo earned back its investment, met its re-branding objectives and began saving on every single proof. The investment paid for itself and the ProofMaster installation continues to save us both time and money.”
Beyond proofing for packaging and marketing collateral, the ProofMaster installation has also helped Dymo with poster production, display header cards and other merchandising or event-related items. Dymo plans to proof and print all its large format materials using the new options available in ProofMaster v3. Dymo will also be taking advantage of the remote and soft-proofing options offered by ProofMaster v3 to cut back even further on its production times.
