Innovative packaging can help products stand out on the shelf. However, matching brand colour across different pack types like stand-up pouches, folding cartons, labels, overwraps, and shelf trays can be challenging. When printing, brands can use either a spot colour or a CMYK breakdown. While spot colours are more accurate, CMYK is more economical. For both, the choice of packaging material, printing process, and ink can significantly influence the final appearance of a brand’s colour on the shelf.

“Colour consistency is critical in brand recognition because consumers often associate any colour discrepancy with product quality,” said Cindy Cooperman, vice-president, brand global strategic accounts, X-Rite Pantone. “Our Brand Colour Assessment Profile aims to alleviate this by helping brands understand how colour will reproduce early in the design process before colour samples are even sent.”

With this program, X-Rite Pantone’s colour experts will create a personalized colour assessment profile using the brand’s specified colour. Brand managers and designers can use this report to:

• see how specific brand colours will look on multiple packaging substrates;
• determine whether CMYK is accurate enough for various pack types;
• make informed colour decisions early in the design phase; and
• save time, minimize unexpected surprises, and eliminate time wasted trying to hit unachievable colours.

For a limited time, X-Rite Pantone is offering the Brand Colour Assessment Profile for no charge. To learn more and request a customized report, visit https://www.xrite.com/categories/training/cpg-brand-color-assessment-program.

Previously, they utilized profiles downloaded from the RIP vendor on one machine, while on the other flatbed, they relied on custom profiles created years ago for a specific media. For roll devices, they utilized profiles included from a different RIP.

During our discussion, I suggested utilizing a single RIP software platform across all devices to maintain consistent colour output. This approach ensures the same underlying colour management process is applied to all printers, resulting in improved colour accuracy. Additionally, using a single RIP software can simplify spot colour reproduction.

Initially, I worked with flatbed printers that utilize UV-cured ink. Through my experience with UV and LED curing systems, I have come to realize that it is unnecessary to develop a profile for each individual type of media. Instead, I opt for a media with a neutral white point, which serves as my profile for all media. This is because on UV and LED curing printers, the ink adheres to the surface of the media and is bonded with the LED/UV lights. The sole difference in colour lies in the media’s white point.

I have measured various batches of styrene and coroplast and the white point varies from batch to batch. One can be blue while another can be neutral. The same is true for coroplast and other media.

A master profile

Printing and colour management become easier with a single master profile. There is no need to guess which profile to use, and managing your spot colour library becomes simpler. Most importantly, if you need to re-profile due to a change in colour, you can do so within an hour to bring the machine back to its baseline. I have come across systems with six to eight profiles created at different times, and redoing all those profiles in case of colour drifts can be a daunting task.

Some have argued against my theory, claiming that I am not taking into account the media’s white point. While this may be true, it’s important to note the white point is constantly shifting. Although profiling the bluer styrene may provide a slight advantage, there’s no guarantee the next batch will be the same colour. Additionally, some argue different media types require separate profiles due to their unique characteristics. However, this is not the case with UV and LED-cured inks, as they do not behave like aqueous or solvent inks.

Getting back to my customer. I created one master profile for each machine. I then tested the colour on three different media. I measured the colour between the two flatbeds. The primary and secondary colours (CMYKRGB) were within 1.1 DE00 average to each other. Visually you could not see a difference between them. They did share the same ink set. I then compared the roll printers to the flatbed and the variation in the same colours was an average of 2.3 DE00. Still a very close match but there was a slight saturation difference. However, the colour was really close.

Lastly, I measured the Lab values for the custom brand colours and created new spot colours in the RIP. We printed and optimized the brand colours for each printer. The brand colours now matched so that if they colour print a job on any of the four printers, they would be visually very similar. 

I wanted to share this experience because this customer had been doing a great job with printing but spent too much time every day making colour adjustments. I revisited the customer after a few months, and they said that now they are able to print, and they don’t have to think about colour. If they get a new custom brand colour they know how to measure it and load that colour into the RIP, print the swatches and choose the best version. This becomes the brand colour for that printer. That process takes 30 minutes. The operator said, “Now the greys are grey.” Yes, the foundation of colour that you may recall from my last article.  

Angus Pady is a G7-certified expert that has helped customers resolve colour management challenges for over 30 years. He can be reached at angus.pady@fujifilm.com.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2023 issue of PrintAction.

The Nix Spectro L, in tandem with the free Nix Toolkit app or other third-party apps, allows users to instantly measure the colour of any surface. Professionals can leverage this data, including delta-e, spectral reflectance curve, ink density, RGB, CMYK, Lab and paint matches, to make business decisions.

“At Nix Sensor, our mission is to make colour measurement accessible and simple for everyone. The Nix Spectro L exemplifies our commitment to this goal, offering a versatile and efficient solution that can seamlessly integrate into various manufacturing and colour processes,” said a company statement.

SunConnect is a digital colour communication tool that will enable converters to communicate colour match request and quality control data on press directly from a smartphone, tablet, or desktop.

SunConnect eliminates the requirement of sending physical swatches back and forth between the customer and colour center, improving colour accuracy and saving time and costs for both parties. This helps streamline the entire process and results in faster turnaround times for colour match requests.

“We are thrilled to announce the launch of SunConnect for the flexo corrugated printing market and to continue to expand our digital colour management portfolio,” said Mehran Yazdani, president, Global Packaging Materials and Advanced Materials, Sun Chemical. “We hope that SunConnect can provide a breakthrough for flexo water-based packaging printing companies looking for a user-friendly, entry level color management solution.”

These metallic colours fit in the fifth colour station of the Xeikon Cheetah press. Dry toner technology allows for hassle-free colour swapping by just replacing the toner dosing unit and the developer unit.

Filip Weymans, Xeikon’s vice-president marketing, said, “The development of application-tuned toners empowers printers to create their own digital solution, allowing them to stand out from other print providers and remain competitive. With the Xeikon metallic gold and silver toners, we continue our commitment to innovate in leading-edge technology and provide new opportunities for the label printing industry.”

Described by Herodotus as far back as 420 BC, it was widely used by Islamic and Asian societies and had one of the longest and most cultivated traditions in Europe.

Also called miniature, after the Latin word ‘miniare,’ which means to colour with minium (a red lead), the process grew more elaborate and gold was introduced.

Its complexity and cost meant illumination was reserved for special books like an altar Bible.

There were three main types of gold and silver application:

• metallic leaf laid on a wet glue design and polished with a burnishing tool when dry;
• a sticky gesso (thick, water-based paint, often formed of plaster, chalk or gypsum, bound with glue) built up to create a 3D effect, with the metal then applied and burnished; and
• metallic powder and gum Arabic mixed into an ink and applied with pen or brush.

This form of decorative print evolved when the invention of the Gutenburg press made widespread book production possible. Mechanization also shaped other areas of book design including the cover.

At the same time gold leaf became too expensive to keep up with the increased production of books.

Today, the addition of gold or silver is typically a commercial print process.

For offset print, gold and silver ink can be used, although this is not always without its challenges. Foil blocking requires a separate post-production step, where a heated die is stamped onto the foil and then onto the surface of the paper leaving the design behind.

For digital print, the metallic colour is reproduced directly from a file on the computer. Fast and simple, there are no set up costs. This makes it ideal for short runs and smaller orders.

Erwin Busselot is business innovations & solutions director, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe.

Designed to work in conjunction with Esko’s WebCenter and Automation Engine, Virtual InkBooks enables users throughout a printing or packaging operation to view Pantone and custom ink libraries in real-time, and allows production teams to easily customize and record job-specific ink data in the cloud. These libraries can be used for repeat work downstream or across multiple jobs or output devices, reducing make-ready costs and improving and augmenting colour consistency across multiple platforms.

According to Marc Raad, CEO of Signficans Automation, the entry into the world of software development was a natural progression for the company, which has a “track record of improving production efficiencies and automating workflows for its clients throughout the Americas.”

“In fact, Virtual InkBooks was first conceived after a conversation with one of our packaging clients, Bay Cities, which expressed a desire to reduce the variables, manpower, and costs associated with managing colour consistency, particularly with re-orders,” explains Raad. “Over the next couple of months we worked closely with Bay Cities to develop a solution to address these specific needs, and the result was a robust piece of industry software.”

Headquartered in Pico Rivera California, Bay Cities is an expert in printed corrugated displays and packaging operations. With the addition of Virtual InkBooks, the company is now able to track and accurately reproduce colours.

How we feel about the world at the moment is something Pantone has tried to capture with its colour of the year. For the first time, it has ushered in a new year with a completely new shade. Very Peri, a vibrant periwinkle blue with a violet red undertone, symbolizes ‘the changes the world is experiencing as we look to move beyond the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic’.

Other trends shaped by the pandemic have been highlighted by the design community and here are some that stand out:

Candy colours

Online design magazine We And The Colour  says vibrant candy colour will help make a strong, positive statement in these uncertain times.

Creative network Behance agrees, saying vibrant candy colour schemes bring positivity and grab the viewer’s attention with striking graphic design creations. They translate into multiple graphic design fields such as web design, animation, illustration and typography. It also highlighted the resurgence of risograph art with artists and graphic designers finding clever ways to recreate effects digitally and bring vibrant colours and perfect imperfections to their artwork.

Bold and bright

Infographic and graphic design software developer Venngage says bold and bright colours will be shaping design in 2022. Bold colours, contrasted with lighter text, will make images pop. Brands will be pairing their bold backgrounds with equally colourful icons and illustrations. They will make use of the fact that icons share messages at a glance, and mean the same thing in multiple languages, to easily reach audiences. In 2021, the emphasis was on flat icons and illustrations. In 2022, there will be a mix of both flat and 3D icons with the primary connection being how colourful they are.

Exploring the colour spectrum

Online design tutorial provider Envato Tuts+ says designers will be encouraged to explore the extremes of the colour spectrum in the months ahead whether that is a multi-hued palette of rich brights or a brave application of strong, singular colour. It pointed to bold colour’s ability to enliven even the simplest of designs, complementing minimal typography, and investing designs with a psychological power. It suggested trying an all-red scheme across a range of print media or use a range of rich, complementary hues across packaging designs.

Pastels

The number one trend for 99designs, the global creative platform from Vista, is adventurous pastels. It expects to see more designs that give pastels a twist. That twist could be pairing them with geometric shapes, line illustrations, or displaying them in full-on, funky patterns in the style of maximalist design.

2022 promises to be a year when creative impulses will be unleashed, perhaps more boldly than ever before as designers tap into, and reflect, a newfound optimism. 2022 is indeed going to be a colourful ride. Strap in.

The platform, which provides access to all 15,000 Pantone colours available in the cloud, has added features that will offer designers across the world a holistic tool facilitating the creation of digital mood boards and palettes. It will enable live collaboration within teams, clients and partners throughout the design workflow globally.

The Pantone Connect platform, first launched in April 2020, has evolved to adapt to a new creative and working environment that has merged physical and digital like never before due to the pandemic. Pantone worked closely with designers across industries to understand the nuances of the new workflow, updating the product to best match their needs. As a result, Pantone has streamlined the platform to be an all-in-one digital tool, where designers can easily integrate colour through the entire design process from start to finish.

The platform is available in the Adobe Extension Marketplace for use in Adobe Creative Cloud software, App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) for your smartphone, and as a web application in a web browser.

“Pantone’s process for product design is very personal. We like to get in the trenches with the design community to understand how our tools can better help their process from inspiration to creation,” said Jung Sin, global director, Digital Product Management at Pantone. “With this newest iteration of Pantone Connect, we believe we created a unique tool that has evolved to how designers naturally work, and we are excited to continue adapting and updating our tools to accommodate that.”

Current and future Xante’ X16/X33 users will be able to “enjoy the new heavy pigment-loaded white ink for greater coverage, printing fewer layers and increasing production speed.”

Mark R. Priede, vice-president of sales and marketing, said, “Our customers are demanding greater production and flexibility. We are continuing to design new functionality for our current customers. The heavy white ink will allow the customer to have greater coverage in a single pass. This will make them more efficient and increase overall productivity. We are always working hard to provide this for our current and future customers.”

The four digital neon Touch7 Colour Guides enable the consistent reproduction of 1,520 colours when running neon pink and neon yellow toners on the five colour Ricoh Pro C7200X digital colour sheetfed press.

Richard Ainge, founder and CTO of Touch7, said, “Every colour in these world-first digital neon colour guides uses a neon toner to produce bright, vibrant, punchy results and extend the gamut of the Ricoh press. They range from deep saturated red colours, violets and blues to subtle pastel shades. Their creation as a fifth colour file is simple and logical.”

Eef de Ridder, vice-president, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe, said, “Colour guides have long been associated with Pantone but its neon and pastel colour guides are not suited to digital production. The Touch7 guides feature 1,520 digital colours and there is no need to mix spot colours or inks, which can result in inaccuracy, waste and additional costs. The guides allow the effortless and highly affordable creation of visually stunning and captivating printed results. They support inspiring design and engaging print that prompts a reaction.”

Neon inks for UV printing are the latest craze in the SwissQprint ink portfolio. The available colours are neon pink and neon yellow. They glow in daylight and are fluorescent in black light. Yet, more colour variants are possible in the mix: Neon green and neon orange.

SwissQprint describes the application areas as follows: “Neon is ideal for event, exhibition, art and theme worlds, and it’s the key to truly dazzling promotions.”

The range of potential indoor applications includes posters, ceiling hangers and POS displays, information and guidance systems, trade fair and event concepts including wristbands, safety notices or campaign signage, and more.

Neon inks are available for all SwissQprint flatbed and roll-to-roll printer models with UV-LED curing. They can be retrofitted at any time, as SwissQprint systems have nine freely configurable colour channels.

“The availability of orange and red EUV5 inks opens up new creative opportunities for LEC2 users,” said Jay Roberts, Roland DGA’s product manager of UV printers. “By widening the gamut, they further increase the colour capabilities of our next-generation UV printer/cutters, allowing for incredibly realistic, eye-catching prints and making it easier than ever to hit specific brand colours.”

To learn more about EUV5 inks and the VersaUV LEC2 series printer/cutters, visit https://www.rolanddga.com/lec2.

Julie Cross, technical director for Domino’s Digital Printing Solutions division said, “After listening to the challenges faced by some of our customers, we wanted to help them by providing a varnish optimized for overprinting UV95 printed output. We therefore set about finding a solution, ultimately deciding to work in partnership with Paragon Inks. After 18 months of great collaboration between the two teams, we have developed a range of varnishes fully validated for compliance, and suitable for global use.”

The first set of varnishes (matt and gloss including TTO over-printable) for use with Domino’s UV95 food packaging-compliant UV digital ink set, are optimized such that the output does not need to be corona treated before the varnish is applied. Not only does this reduce the complexity of the hybrid printing line, but it also provides a solution for medias that are unable to be corona treated, such as some metallic foils. During testing, it was also identified that the gloss varnish can be used as a lamination adhesive, enabling further simplification, as one varnish can be used for two applications.

These varnishes have been formulated for many non-direct food packaging applications and, under the right conditions, are migration compliant. They are suitable for global use, being fully compliant with Nestle, EuPIA, Swiss Ordinance Annex 10 and the North American Toxic Substances Control Act.

To compliment these, there is a second suite of varnishes suitable for use with Domino’s general purpose UV90 ink set.

Amanda Jones, business development and marketing director at Paragon Inks, said, “At Paragon Inks, we are committed to continuous improvement and customer service. We recognized that label converters were experiencing challenges applying varnishes to digitally printed labels. This partnership with Domino highlights how we have worked together as a team to develop a mutually beneficial solution for both organization’s customers. We look forward to continuing to work with Domino in the future.”

Designed specifically for wide web solvent ink on film applications, PureFlexo Printing maximizes press efficiency, repeatability and overall performance while enabling printers and prepress providers to experience cleaner print, stable colour and a better bottom line for their business.

Emma Schlotthauer, chief marketing officer at Miraclon, said, “A wide print latitude is the key to profitable production. PureFlexo Printing addresses a core technical issue – unwanted ink spread – which helps to widen print latitude and reset the quality-efficiency balance.”

PureFlexo Printing is available immediately to all Flexcel NX System users through the Kodak Flexcel NX Print Suite for Flexible Packaging.

“UniNature is our third generation of sustainable water-based inks and coatings for paper and board applications meeting the requirements of brand owners and packaging converters,” says Hanns Martin Kaiser, vice-president, Business Units Paper & Board EMEA and Liquid Food Packaging at Siegwerk. “With its launch we again deliver on our commitment to enabling the development of new packaging innovations in line with a circular economy.”

The new water-based ink and coating solutions are formulated with a high bio-renewable content, measured according to ASTM 6866.

The new ink and coating series is applicable for many paper and board applications including corrugated board boxes, trays and displays, fast food packaging, sacks and bags, as well as cups and wraps. It supports various printing applications whilst meeting the highest market and regulatory standards.

Designed for use with Siegwerk’s Unibase and Uni T coloured bases, UniNature inks can be supplied as ready-to-use inks directly from Siegwerk. However, UniNature extenders and Unibase or Uni T colourbases are more frequently supplied to customers to be mixed on demand at dispense equipment directly at the customer.

“We provide our customers with clear formulation guidelines compliant with relevant regulations for the end use of the packaging,” adds Paul Pain, head of water-based technology at Siegwerk. “Training and support provided to customers through our OPS program enables the most efficient use of our products in their operations.”

Nutec’s Diamond D10-GF-MS21 ink range is now being offered with orange and light black ink options, in addition to the standard six-colour inkset of CMYK, light cyan and light magenta.

Customers using Mimaki SS21 presses employing Epson DX4, DX5, DX6 and DX7 printheads are now able to experience an expanded colour gamut (ECG) as well as enhanced grayscale or monochrome printing when adding Nutec’s ECG options.

This latest Diamond eco-solvent digital ink range from Nutec is GBL-free and chemically & colour matched to Mimaki SS21 ink. It is designed as a back-to-back replacement and requires no flushing or profiling when converting from OEM inks.

“We are excited to be offering our customers an expanded inkset for the high-performing D10-GF-MS21 ink range. We trust they will be thrilled with the enhanced colour experience on their self-adhesive and flexible media applications,” says Neil Green, Nutec sales and marketing director.

This article, based on my thesis, “The Analysis of Skin Tones and How They are Replicated in Commercial Offset Lithography,” aims to answer this question as well as take a look into the world of skin tone reproduction.

To be able to analyze where the issue lies, it is a good idea to start from the historical pretenses that were originally set to calibrate skin tones, and how the pretenses have had an effect on the more modern ways of colour calibration.

So why could skin tones be difficult to print?

A historical example would be the regular use of Kodak’s Shirley cards and how those had skewed the reference for diverse skin tones. As described in Mandalit Del Barco’s November 13, 2014, podcast on the subject, Shirley cards were reference images used to calibrate the skin tones in printed media, and the card was only a photo of a Caucasian woman. This card was used as the only skin tone reference image for many years by photo reproduction lab technicians.

This quickly became a problem because if anyone was not Caucasian and was photographed, there would be no reference for the colour of their skin and they would often be printed incorrectly.

Due to of this lack of diversity in photography and print, the notion of western beauty standards has been perpetuated for decades and we are still trying to overcome the ripple effects of this colourism, as mentioned in Lorna Roth’s 2009 article on Shirley cards, “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity” from the Canadian Journal of Communication. The impact of this could also lead many to believe that non-Caucasian skin tones are more difficult to reproduce as the colour calibration methods have historically been non-inclusive to them.

Thankfully, modern colour calibration methods have been more diverse and include a wider range of skin tones so that more than just Caucasian skin tones look good in print. Since this level of diversity is a newer concept, there is not nearly as much knowledge on non-Caucasian skin tones compared to Caucasian skin tones.

Another way to examine this phenomenon would be to look at these more modern, commonly used skin tone calibration methods and try to extrapolate why things could be going wrong. So, to take a look at this, colour data from various IT8 targets and test images were narrowed down to the skin tones directly and then processed into Chromix ColorThink Pro 3.0.8. They were then compared to the GRACoL 2013 ICC colour profile to set a baseline for what colours are printable on a standard offset lithographic press, and to see if any of these skin tones are out of gamut or act differently in some way. The specific samples used were the Kodak Ektacolor IT8.7/2-1993 target, Fujicolor IT8.7/2-1993 and the Agfacolor IT8.7/2-1993, a GMG test image and a general use ISO 300 test image.

As you can see in the opening image, it is clear these skin tone colours are within the standard gamut for offset lithographic printing, with the exception of a few very dark hues.

Although because of this, we can assume that the vast majority of these colours should theoretically be easy to reproduce as they are within gamut. So, then this leads us to a conclusion that there may be an external factor impacting the way we see these colours, and also brings up more questions than answers.

Since it should be easy to reproduce skin tones in a print setting, there must be a reason why they are still so tricky to get right. Ultimately, the theory as to why this is happening is that we, as humans, just simply have a lower tolerance for the way skin tones look when they are printed out.

To investigate this matter, the author compared a photo of a group of people to an image of a rose. It is important to note that both of these photos had the same 25 per cent green overlay in order to to simulate a colour printing error. In the flower image, the green was not as noticeable as was in the image of the people. This example gave an insight into how humans perceive colour outside of the more technical colour processing programs and methods of calibration. We clearly have a lower tolerance when skin tones look wrong; the margin of error for those colours have to be smaller than other colours since they can be drastically changed, and easily too. Skin tones are very neutral colours, so they can easily be overpowered if there is too much of one colour cloaking the image, and when compared to other commonly used imagery in print media, they are always the most consistently neutral and therefore “difficult” to get right.

Ultimately, if there is a slight error in the ink management on a press or if images are processed incorrectly, it is much for skin tones to show any of the user errors compared to other colours and imagery. We are able to notice the change in colour more immediately than when the same errors are applied to other examples. The combination of the historical misrepresentation of skin tones in colour reproduction on top of our natural tolerance for discolouration in these tones have created this perfect storm to make it seem like skin tones are difficult when in reality, they should not be.

Laura Rendell-Dean is a fourth-year student in Ryerson University’s Graphic Communications Management program. She can be reached at laura.rendelldean@ryerson.ca.

“Manufacturers of digital presses are beginning to offer silver and gold inks and toners to complement traditional CMYK inks and toners. But without Color-Logic, digital printers are limited to a single gold colour, while Color-Logic licensees can offer their customers 55 different gold options. And these golds can not only be used as spot colours in designs, but in the many embellishment options offered by Color-Logic as well. Digital press owners using the Color-Logic System no longer need to waste precious production time swapping out silver ink or toner to run gold,” said Color-Logic sales and marketing director Mark Geeves.

“Visual colour consistency across all marketing media of a brand – whether online or print – is key for a successful brand recognition,” explains Kiran Deshpande, global senior expert colour management at Siegwerk. “A uniform colour management process based on the G7 methodology offers brand owners a proven concept to ensure an effective quality management even throughout a complex print supply chain.”

Under the new partnership, Siegwerk’s certified G7 experts will now help to qualify providers of print, creative, and prepress services in the G7 methodology by offering G7 Master Qualifications through Idealliance for its customers worldwide.

The G7 methodology is Idealliance’s set of specifications for CMYK printing process for ensuring a common visual appearance in all printed elements across multiple devices and facilities.

Developed for the fifth colour station on the Ricoh Pro C7200X digital colour sheetfed press, the additional colours transform a broad range of applications from catalogues, posters, flyers, direct mail, and brochures to business cards, greetings cards, tickets, invitations, certificates and packaging.

The new toners are available on new and existing Ricoh Pro C7200X presses.

“We pride ourselves on listening to our customers and incorporating their voice into future portfolio developments. These new metallic toners are a result of their voices and our innovation—and we’re excited to bring this to market,” said Heather Poulin, vice-president, CIP Marketing & Portfolio Management, Ricoh USA, Inc.

The gold and silver toners will be available in North America in July.

These are designed to help printers improve their colour matching capabilities, shorten make-readies, and reduce waste so they can remain competitive on price and maintain their profitability.

With ChromaQA, operators are not required to be “highly skilled users” of spectrophotometers or computers. Instead, these new solutions are designed for “simplicity and quickly guide press operators and ink technicians to optimize colour match.”

“All ChromaQA solutions include our ink management module, which is extremely powerful and has really earned praises from packaging printers who often times must maintain thousands and thousands of colour standards,” said Stephen Rankin, director of product management for Techkon U.S.A.

These multi-day, live training events equip participants with the knowledge, experience, and ability to implement and manage G7, colour management, and process control across all four-colour (CMYK) print technology.

With nine new opportunities to choose from, spanning multiple time zones and being offered in English, Spanish and Mandarin/Cantonese, these trainings benefit global audiences. Course registration is available online. Discounts are available for Idealliance members.

“Brands and print buyers demand consistency and colour quality, regardless of where in the world or how their products are printed,” said Jordan Gorski, executive director, Idealliance. “The continued demand for training around the world is helping to drive the global growth of the G7 methodology.”

V-Bond Ink is not only suitable for printing on children’s toys, but also useful for direct-printing on school supplies, stationery, jewellery and fashion items, hygiene products, earbuds and electronic accessories, culinary products, pet products and other substrates. Available in CMYK as well as gloss and white, V-Bond Ink can be combined with Roland DGA’s True Rich Color 2 profiles for a wider colour gamut. The phthalate-free, high-opacity white ink is suitable for printing rich, dense colours on clear materials, while the gloss enables users to incorporate textural and dimensional effects into prints.

“The new V-Bond Ink is safe for indoor printing and it’s formulated to bring out the best in our LEF2 series printers,” said Jay Roberts, Roland DGA’s UV printer product manager.

The project, executed in co-operation with a range of partners, including Miraclon that provided the plates, aimed to prove uniform colour and image reproduction on a range of different substrates can be achieved using flexo, to ensure the packaging communicate a brand’s identity and message consistently and provide consumers with a positive shopping experience.

To maximize the practical relevance, complex images typically found on packaging for foods, coffee, tobacco, cosmetics and animal food were chosen. Subtle gradients in the highlights and fine details in the high tonal ranges were features shared by all the designs. A subject rich in contrast and showing a woman’s face completely covered in gold make-up proved to be a particular challenge for CMYK flexo printing. It was this subject that also inspired the motto for the project: “Together for Golden Results”.

Three applications were produced: flexible packaging (printed on BOPP film), corrugated preprint on 135 g/cm² paper fully coated on one side, and a paper carrier bag made from 100 g/cm² white-coated kraft paper.

Zecher anilox rollers equipped with Zecher’s SteppedHex engraving technology were used to print all three applications. This engraving method is characterized by a specially staggered cell geometry, which helps optimize print quality.

All three applications were produced using FLEXCEL NX plates, made with Kodak MAXTONE SX Screening and a 60l/cm (152 lpi) screen.

“We selected FLEXCEL NX Plate technology based on its strong presence in the flexo market and the controlled ink transfer it delivers,” explains Jörg Rohde, head of application technology at Zecher.

The technical resources for producing the flexible packaging application were made available by machinery and systems manufacturer Windmöller & Hölscher (W&H) at its Printing Technology Center in Lengerich, Germany. As the facility houses a FLEXCEL NX Ultra Solution from Miraclon, the flexo plates could be made on the spot.

The corrugated preprint application was produced at Christiansen Print in Ilsenburg, Germany, using FLEXCEL NX plates from SCHAWK Goslar, while the paper carrier bag was printed at Stenqvist Austria with FLEXCEL NX Plates from FLEX-PUNKT Druckformen GmbH.

There were delays executing the project owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, everyone involved was excited – not only by the colour consistency with close tolerances across all substrates, but also by the image quality in the gradients and fine details.

The new colour package includes training courses as well as ongoing consultancy. It is offered as a ‘pay as you go’ subscription model.

Xeikon’s colour management expert, Bruce Dransfield, states, “Historically, colour management software has needed an expert to deliver results and this takes time. Xeikon has developed its XCS Pro 2.0 as a ‘no waste’ ‘no expert’, fully automated colour system.”

The SmartLF SGi and SmartLF SCi scanner series are suitable for capturing, enhancing, sharing, and copying information from large-format documents of all types, such as hand-drawn originals, old plans, marked-up construction drawings, textured artwork, and thick media.

“The new functionality, including the ability to drive the scanner from a tablet, brings the full power of large-format scanning right into the hands of our customers,” said Jacob Bendix, chief commercial officer, Colortrac.

The Colortrac SmartLF SGi and SmartLF SCi large-format scanners deliver “fast performance, with optimized preset controls and an extended list of internal printer drivers to connect directly to large-format printers.” SmartWorks Imaging, the newest member of the SmartWorks software family, is a fresh implementation of the scan-once workflow that is easier to navigate than its predecessor, SmartWorks Pro.

Until now, graphic designers who prepare files for use with the new neon inks were limited to commercially available guides that were produced using offset lithography. When designers attempt to use these analog colour guides in digital print, the result is “disappointing”. This means lengthy trial-and-error procedures when attempting to design for the latest digital print engines.

Since inks vary among print engine manufacturers, theTouch7 colour guides are produced and sold only by printer manufacturers, for use only with their machines.

“Touch7 neon colour guides are printed by Color-Logic partners that manufacture digital print engines, and thus reflect exactly what can be expected when using the substrate on which the guide was printed. Touch7 Neon Color Guides help printers demonstrate and communicate to graphic designers the extended gamut of colours as well as the delicate pastels possible on digital presses, without the difficulty of trying to match colours seen in an offset-produced guide,” said Richard Ainge, developer of the Touch7 process.

The Touch7 neon colour guides are now available for pink and yellow neon and fluorescent colours. Touch7 provides print engine manufacturers with 760 colours for each neon colour, in addition to the standard CMYK ink sets.

Myiro-1 was designed as an accurate and repeatable budget-friendly spectrophotometer to meet the high-end colour profiling needs of the photography, commercial print, packaging and signage industries. Although low-cost, it features measurement accuracy, repeatability, built quality and product reliability. It offers WLAN connectivity enabling sharing the measurements with a computer wirelessly.

Techkon USA is pairing Myiro-1 with different levels of MyiroTools ICC profiling software to offer three bundled solutions designed to meet customers’ needs.

“We are thrilled to partner with Konica Minolta and be able to extend our reach beyond the pressroom and now offer world-class ICC profiling solutions for the prepress department as well as the photo and digital signage markets,” said Stephen Rankin, director of product management at Techkon USA. “We’ve put Myiro-1 through extensive internal and external testing and have found that the overall quality and value of this product lives up to the high expectations that our customers have for the products and services offered by Techkon USA. In addition, we absolutely love the wireless capability of this device and how it greatly improves the overall user experience.”

The colour of a sample can change depending on the light source it is viewed under. In everyday colour evaluation we can deal with a number of different sources, but only as long as we understand and accommodate the light’s characteristics and the effect it can have in terms of colour.

In this article we consider different ways to specify a light source using the colour temperature scale, e.g. 5000 K, and also official CIE illuminants, such as D50. We make real measurements outside in the street, and show how close Toronto daylight agrees with theoretical expectations!

Effect of lighting

During the day a car may look blue (top), while at night under sodium-vapour street lamps, it can look silver or gray (bottom).

To illustrate the effect that light can have on the colour of an object, consider the example of a car parked in the road. During the day, the car is illuminated by daylight and it looks blue. After dark, when the car is only illuminated by a street lamp, it may look a totally different colour, perhaps silver or dark gray. Why does this happen?

During the day, daylight consists of “all the colours” which reflect off the blue paint of the vehicle and we see the blue colour of the car. After dark, the car is only illuminated with light from a street lamp. Street lamps are often high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps that emit most of their radiation as a very narrow spike in the yellow part of the spectrum. The blue paint of the car does not have much reflectance in this part of the spectrum, and so very little “colour” is returned to the observer, and as a result the car looks devoid of colour and neutral – silver or gray.

Colour temperature

In colour management, there are different ways to describe the colour of a light source. A convenient method is called the colour temperature scale. The idea of colour temperature can be appreciated by considering the progressive heating of a piece of metal. As objects are heated, they get hotter and begin to glow and emit light. The colour changes as objects get warmer, so an object goes from dull black to deep red then bright red and finally to “white hot.” It is therefore possible to describe the colour of a light source by temperature. When used in this way, the temperature is called colour temperature. In the colour temperature scale, lower colour temperatures are redder/warmer and higher colour temperatures are bluer/colder.

Colour temperature is measured on an absolute temperature scale and has units in Kelvin (K). A tungsten source may have a colour temperature of, for example, 2800 K. (No degree sign is used with K, so colour temperature is not written as 28000 K but simply 2800 K.) Typical values for common light sources are: high-pressure sodium vapor (used for night-time street lighting in the car example), 2100 K; photographic studio lamp, 3400 K; electronic flash, 6000 K; average daylight, 5000 – 6500 K; artificial daylight compact fluorescent lamp, 6500 K; uncalibrated computer monitor, 9300 K. The colour temperature scale provides a succinct, numerical means of specifying the colour of a light source and is widely used in colour management.

Spectral Power Distribution Curves

There are many types of light sources. Some are artificial like tungsten and compact fluorescent light bulbs, and some are natural sources, like daylight. Light sources can have very different operating principles, which results in a wide variation in the inherent characteristics of the light. The Kelvin colour temperature scale does not fully reveal all the characteristics of the light, so we can also use a spectral distribution curve. The spectral graph describes the relative amount of power or energy at each wavelength and is technically known as a spectral power distribution curve.

Daylight was measured in Toronto, Canada (white line) and shown to be very close to CIE Illuminant D50. Screenshot is from basICColor catch 5 colour management software.

From the examples, we see that daylight tends to be well balanced with emission throughout the spectrum and thus the “colour” of daylight is more or less neutral. A fluorescent or LED light source has some dominant peaks in the blue and green part of the spectrum – the illumination from this source is very spiky.

From the graphs it is clear that each source has very different characteristics. Daylight that originates from a hot glowing sun is essentially incandescent. Incandescent sources have a graph with a continuous line. Other sources, such as fluorescent lights, are not heated up and therefore do not operate this way. These lights contain a gas that is excited by the discharge of an electric current, which in turn excites the phosphor coating of the tube, which glows, giving off light. The chemical composition of the coating can be altered to adjust the colour temperature of the emitted light – which is why you can get different colour temperature lights at Home Depot!

By using spectral graphs, we can clearly see the smooth continuous nature of some sources (daylight) vs. the spiky response of others (fluorescent lamps and LEDs). The spiky nature of fluorescent sources can cause problems such as metamerism, when these sources are used in viewing booths.

CIE Illuminants vs. real sources

With so many different types of light sources in everyday use, a few common light sources have been chosen and adopted as universally accepted standards. Periodically over the years, in response to user needs, the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) agrees on the name and specification of an illuminant and publishes the spectral power graph for the colour community to use.

A CIE illuminant is a theoretical spectral power curve that has been established as a standard. The spectral curve can be an average of light sources and is not a real, actual light source. There are physical standards for the kilogram and meter, but a CIE illuminant is just a theoretical construct – it is a spectral graph – and there is no “golden standard” tungsten bulb in a vault in Paris!

Over the years, the CIE has defined a number of illuminants that range conveniently in letters A, B, C, D, E, F. Illuminant A is represented by incandescent lights (tungsten filament bulbs). These devices have a colour temperature of 2856 K. Illuminants B and C are daylight-type illuminants, but they are no longer in general use. They were made by placing a liquid cell containing a blue copper sulphate solution in front of illuminant A. D illuminants are daylight-type illuminants. Illuminants D50, D55, D65, and D75 have colour temperatures of 5000 K, 5500 K, 6500 K, and 7500 K, respectively. D50 and D65 are widely used as illuminants in printing and imaging. European countries often use D65. Illuminant E is an imaginary, hypothetical equi-energy illuminant. Illuminant E is used in some colorimetry calculations. Series F illuminants relate to fluorescent lights.

It should be noted that the spectral power distributions for an illuminant, Illuminant D50 for example, is a representation of “standard daylight” and any actual sample of daylight might be different according to the geographic location, altitude, weather, time of day, and so on.

A light booth was measured and despite the spiky response of the LED source (white line), the booth can create light that approximates D50.

Lighting and light booths

A customer may visit a print shop and together with the printer may generate an excellent sample that is approved in a press-side D50 viewing booth. However, when the customer takes the samples back to the office to show their boss, under office lighting the samples may change colour and incur the anger of the manager!

If someone holds up a print and says they do not like the colours, the first thing to do is to ask them how are they viewing the print. If colour measurement for the print was done with settings that intended viewing for D50, the sample should be viewed under D50. The print is only intended for a specific viewing condition and may look different under other light sources. Another way to think of this is that if you have sent a print to your client and you want them to see what you see; they must view the print under the conditions you viewed and measured it under.

One way to create well specified and controlled viewing conditions is to use a viewing booth. Viewing booths have switches that offer D50, D65, or other illuminant conditions, such as settings for grocery store or clothing store lighting.

In the PANTONE® D50 Lighting Indicator, the top and bottom halves are different in non-D50 lighting. The two-inch sticker can be attached to colour proofs to check the lighting.

In printing and proofing, the light source used by the customer can be checked using the PANTONE D50 Lighting Indicator. In this small sticker, the top and bottom materials are different, but are chosen in such a way that they will look alike under D50 illumination. The sticker can be placed in the corner of a contract proof used to gain customer approval. The sticker will show whether the user is using a lighting condition that approximates D50. There is a D50 and D65 version and each cost around $2. The Lighting Indicator uses an effect known as metamerism, and the top and bottom materials are called a metameric pair.

Summary

We need to always remember that lights themselves have a colour and that colour can be passed on to the sample. We often “standardize” on D50, but strictly speaking, there is no correct light source for evaluating colour. What is more important is that we know the light source we are using, and we communicate that clearly to all involved. It is extremely important to establish agreed viewing conditions between the printer and the customer.

Whether we are considering a shade of lipstick or the colour of a sofa in a catalog, there are many different light sources in common use, but by correctly specifying the light source being used, we can accommodate their differences and ensure successful colour measurement and colour management.

Abhay Sharma is a professor at Ryerson University, Toronto, and the author of a textbook – Understanding Color Management, 2nd Edition, Wiley, 2018.

This article was originally published in the June 2020 issue of PrintAction.