My company has identified five key ways in which AI can take digital print production forward:

Ensuring consistently high print quality – AI algorithms can process data captured from a press’s integrated inspection system to analyze the quality of the printed output in real time to maintain colour consistency and to identify any potential print quality issues early, enabling the press to automatically take action to address them as they arise.

Reducing operator load through automation of repetitive tasks – A valuable use of AI is to help automate repetitive tasks such as print scaling, front-to-back registration, density adjustment, and paper profiling, allowing operators to focus on higher value added activities.

Keeping presses productive cost effectively through targeted preventative maintenance – Changing out components before they fail has become a well-established industry practice. However, the frequency of part replacements has often been based on simple estimations of their average operating lives. AI, on the other hand, can analyze the performance of the press to predict much more accurately when individual components will fail – allowing just those that need replacing to be changed, thus reducing waste from unnecessary downtime and unwarranted component replacements.

Increasing efficiency via print production automation – AI has the potential to play a role in the management and optimization of the entire print production workflow from prepress through to post-processing – automating processes and giving executives better visibility of performance, supporting management decision making and driving even greater efficiencies.

Creating value through greater print personalization – AI can be deployed to analyze large quantities of customer data, facilitating a higher level of print personalization. This can, for example, increase the return on investment for direct mail campaigns.

Sander Sondaal is director, commercial print sales, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe

Measuring devices

In my Colour 101 class, I describe three categories of colour instrument: densitometer, colorimeter, and spectrophotometer (the names are indicative of what they measure). In printing, traditionally density measurements are used to monitor ink amounts on press. Recently, instruments and press consoles have migrated to better, more visually relevant metrics, primarily L*a*b*. A spectrophotometer (spectro) measures the spectrum of a printed colour which allows us to compute L*a*b* (and any other desired metric). A spectro is “backward compatible,” as it can report L*a*b* while also allowing readout of old-fashioned print density.

Spectral data is the uber data type, and the holy grail of colour measurement. It enables us to do many colour calculations, such as predict metamerism to see if the colour of a product on a supermarket shelf will change when exposed to outdoor natural light. Spectral data allows for efficient spot colour matching. The spectrum allows us to take into account different light sources such as daylight D50, fluorescent lights (F Illuminants), or LEDs.

Until recently, to get spectral data, a user had to buy a $10,00+ handheld or scanning spectro.

Nix Toolkit and Variable Spectro represent a new generation of phone-based colour instruments. Measurements can be easily shared via text or email or used within an app to match paint or Pantone colours.

Phone-based spectros

An exciting development in colour measurement is a new generation of lightweight, low-cost, durable spectros that tether to smartphones. At Toronto Metropolitan University, we studied two new-generation smartphone spectros, the Nix Spectro 2 (CD$1339) from Hamilton and Variable Spectro 1 (CD$400) from the U.S. The Nix and Variable spectros were simple and easy to use; they have apps that were effortlessly downloaded from the app store. Measurement data was a one-click export via text or email. Data was plotted within minutes.

Colour difference is technically described in terms of Delta E. Typically, a value between 1-2 Delta E is acceptable in printing. In our testing, we noted around a 1 Delta E colour difference between the low-cost instruments and the $10K+ handheld model.

Phone spectros are a great idea as they rely on your phone for display. The app can be easily updated, and computation is done using your phone’s processing power. Everybody owns a phone these days. Apps can take the measured colour and assist a designer in finding complementary, analogous, opposite colours, shades, harmonies, trends, palettes, etc. The spectros have licenses for spot colour libraries and are therefore able to measure a colour and give you the nearest Pantone match. App developers can go wild with data from these devices.

Further, colours are displayed on a tablet or smartphone in much better fidelity compared to the LCD panel of a hand-held instrument. Connection to the device via Bluetooth, and from the phone to the internet, makes two-way communication a breeze.

The Nix sensor has found huge success in helping customers choose and match paint. In a real-world application, when a burst pipe in the author’s home needed dry wall repair and painting, a Nix Spectro 2 was used to measure the colour of the wall and the app showed the nearest Dulux paint colours with one, two or three stars to indicate best matches. With the user-selected preference, all that was needed was for the painter to estimate the amount of paint needed and a quick bike ride to the local Dulux store with the SKU to get ready for a colour accurate repair job.

M1 and M2 measurement modes

The whole colour measurement industry (both handheld and phone spectros) have contended with two major changes in colour measurement: UV-excited optical brighteners as well as measurement of textiles and fabrics.

UV-excited optical brighteners are widely used in printing papers. To deal with colour measurement of optically brightened papers and to reduce inter-instrument differences, there are standard measurement modes: M1 (UV included) and M2 (UV excluded). M1 is equivalent to D50 lighting and is the preferred measurement mode in the graphic arts. The Variable Spectro 1 only measures in M2 mode, which is a limitation if intended for use in the printing industry.

The other change in instruments is due to the need to measure colour on textiles and fabrics. The weave or thread count is very coarse compared to a halftone printed dot or tiny inkjet droplet. Instrument manufacturers were forced to create larger measuring apertures, 2 mm for print samples but often 5 mm for colours printed on cloth. Some instruments have interchangeable apertures. The Nix Spectro 2 comes in 2 mm and 5 mm sizes while the Variable Spectro 1 is only available in an 8-mm aperture size.

When a burst pipe in the author’s home needed dry wall repair and painting, the Nix Spectro 2 was used to find the closest Dulux paint colour.

Colourful applications

The low price of phone spectros means that we don’t mind their use in a range of dirty situations, such as measuring the colour of raw meat in meat processing plants, wastewater liquids, or nicer liquids such as wine. The consumer can measure and match paint for home decor.

The development of low-cost spectros, linked to our smartphone, has created an infinite range of opportunities to advance the use and integration of colour into design and equally exciting technical and scientific applications. 

Acknowledgement: The author is grateful to Nix Sensor for review devices provided for testing and evaluation and to Sasha Blay for proofreading and copy editing.

Abhay Sharma is a Professor in the School of Graphic Communications Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, and author of Understanding Color Management, Wiley, 2018.

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.

My test images feature multiple four-colour grey balance images. One of the most difficult things to achieve is a linear greyscale. When creating a linear greyscale test image, always ensure your CMYK colour space is GRACoL (Figure 1). This ensures your CMYK values are correctly targeting your press. 

What do I look for?

First is the blend. Do you see any transition issues? Are there any areas where the scale is not linear? This is a sign that the conversion did not work properly, or you have made an error creating your ICC profile. 

The grayscale should be neutral and smooth (Figure 2). 

Figure 2: An example of bad shadows.

The second scale, as shown in Figure 3, has been exaggerated but displays big issues in mid-tones. It has a strong cyan cast and no highlights.

Figure 3: The mid-tones are off in this example.

Grey balance and process control

A great advantage of utilizing grey balance for process control is its simplicity, practicality, and effectiveness. One method of evaluating grey balance on press is to place two grey patches side by side. 

One patch should be composed of chromatic grey (C: 50 M: 40: Y: 40) and the second a true grey (K: 50). The goal is to get the two patches to look the same.

G7 and grey balance

When it comes to achieving grey balance on press, your CTP plate curves play a major role. The G7 method was created to accomplish a nearly neutral appearance when printing four colour images. Grey balancing is not a new technique; it has been a standard practice in photography for many years. Having spent a significant amount of time working with a drum scanner, I fully appreciate the importance of grey balancing when it comes to enhancing the quality of an image.

Based on my experience calibrating hundreds of presses using the G7 methodology, I can confidently say it’s a reliable process. I’ve observed press-to-proof matches that are very close. The secret to its effectiveness lies in creating individual curves for each press unit and keeping the CMYK colours within those units. The approach used here differs from the conventional dot gain TVI technique, as it employs distinct curve values for each colour instead of using the same values across the board. To achieve successful press calibration/fingerprinting, it’s essential to ensure the press is well-maintained and in a consistent condition.

As individuals, we have the ability to differentiate and assess colours that are placed alongside one another. Our sensitivity is particularly high when it comes to identifying variations within shades of grey. 

Figure 4 demonstrates how simple it is to distinguish these differences in grey, as opposed to certain colours.

Figure 4: It is easy to detect colour differences with grey. Notice the sweaters. They match the G7 grey balance colour wedge. Grey balance is the objective.

Improper grey balance will quickly identify if the “spread” or deviation between CMY colours is too great. It is well known that with process inks in offset printing, inking and damping fluctuations show up more distinctly in 4C grey images than in coloured image areas. This is why grey balance patches in colour control bars have been instrumental in the indication of printing process disorders, if any.

Do not forget lighting also plays a huge role in how we perceive the colour grey. If you suspect lighting may be adding a colour cast to your images, take the sheet outside in daylight. 5000K or D50 tries to mimic a cloudy day at noon.

To summarize, if you are not using grey patches to evaluate colour, you are missing out on a valuable tool.

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.

Digital transformation in the printing industry – where do you start?
The following areas in particular are considered for digitization:

• productivity and collaboration;
• security & compliance;
• analytics & intelligence;
• flexibility, efficiency and sustainability; and
• mobility.

The easiest way to start is probably to increase productivity by starting to automate processes that make it easier for us. This frees up staff to spend more time on value-adding activities and also on further concept development. Once the start is in place, it also makes it easier for them to collaborate and achieve higher quality results.

The printing industry focuses on production before administration
A recent Drupa survey found the printing industry places its main focus on productive processes. More than half of the participants already map production processes (such as production, makeready and downtimes) in their operating system. Production planning is also automated. Whereby only six per cent state that the automation potential in pre-press has been exhausted. In contrast, only 10 per cent have completed automation in accounting. Likewise, 50 per cent of the companies use production data acquisition to identify problems at an early stage.

Decisions are made on a digital basis
A cornerstone of digitalization is knowledge. Knowledge that is drawn from data. Around 75 per cent of the printing industry already uses this knowledge to make decisions.

Status quo of digitalization
The theory of Print 4.0, the digitalization of the printing industry, has one goal: the process from the customer’s order to the delivery of the product runs completely digitally and autonomously. The manufacturing and delivery processes are digitally linked and automated. Seamless processes between paper supplier and printer, prepress, printer and material transport: stocks are filled by sensory observations. Human intervention is no longer necessary.

Our industry has already produced many best practice examples from which we can learn. In reality, many industry players have dared to start and have already automated individual workflows. Printing machines behave autonomously. The COVID-19 crisis has once again increased the willingness to digitize. Many companies are switching to digital offerings. Digital providers are entering the market, forcing other entrepreneurs into digitalization in order to maintain competitiveness. Now it is time to use this beginning as a competitive advantage and take the next step.

Error detection

AI-powered cameras and machine learning algorithms can be trained to identify and detect errors such as misaligned images and incorrect colours in the printing process. This can be done in real-time, allowing for immediate correction and minimizing the need for manual inspection.

Quality prediction

Machine learning algorithms can be trained to predict the quality of the print based on various factors such as press settings, ink and paper characteristics, and other parameters.

Quality monitoring

AI and ML can be used to constantly monitor the print quality throughout the run. This can involve capturing images of the print and running them through machine learning algorithms in order to identify and correct errors as they occur.

Deep learning, specifically computer vision and natural language processing, can be designed to identify defects during the product packaging process. These deep learning models can verify that a label on a package is present, correct, straight, and readable.

Quality improvement

Machine learning algorithms can also be used to learn from past print runs and find ways to improve quality. For example, analyzing data from past print runs to identify the press settings and other factors that lead to the best print quality, and using these settings for future print runs.

Multidimensional quality control

Machine learning algorithms can be trained to analyze data from multiple sources such as visual, spectral, and mechanical data to create a multidimensional view of print quality and identify errors and issues that may be missed with traditional methods.

AI package structural creation

Designers use AI-enabled virtual reality environments to design packaging. In some cases, you can see how the package will look when placed on a shelf in a particular store. What will it look like behind glass in the freezer section and under various lighting conditions? How will it look next to other products? All of these can be tested before actual design.

Predictive maintenance

In AI and machine learning, predictive maintenance refers to the ability to use volumes of data to anticipate and address potential issues before they lead to breakdowns in operations, processes, services, or systems. 

AI-driven nesting

The ability to optimize how images are distributed on a page is already being used on various cutting tables and RIPs to minimize material waste.

Custom box creation and personalized printing

We can set up a system that looks at all outgoing shipments and categorizes the packages into groups. The groups then get sorted and placed together, a corrugated feeder matches up the packed groups with box sizes, boxes are automatically created to the exact size required and the packages are then fed into the production line. At the end of the line, the boxes are printed with a personalized message and shipping instructions.

AI-driven inspection

This is, by far, the most advanced use of artificial intelligence in our industry. AI-driven inspection systems can not only see defects faster than any human, but also learn. Computer vision modelling is incredibly adept at learning what an acceptable product/package should look like as it moves down the line. A properly trained model should easily detect wrinkles, rips, tears, warpage, bubbles, colour, and printing errors. The challenge at this stage is that these types of systems require significant amounts of CPU power and the sheer amount of data science knowledge it takes to train, deploy, and monitor a suite of deep learning models running in production is difficult to deploy correctly without outside support.

Adobe Sensei

If you have used Photoshop lately, you may have seen some of the AI-powered tools like Content-Aware Fill. Did you know Adobe Sensei has AI tools that can use your customer data for unique insights about individual consumers? You can use your data assets for predictions.

We are entering a new era where machines will allow us to do our jobs quicker and more efficiently. At the same time, technology will challenge some of our deep-seated beliefs. Embedding AI into your company’s operations, much less ensuring business impact, isn’t going to happen overnight. Organizations will need a short-term strategy for delivering quick, high-impact AI wins and a long-term strategy enabling a progressive artificial intelligence culture.  

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.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the March/April 2023 issue of PrintAction.

One of the main challenges of dye sublimation printing is matching the printed image’s colours to the original as closely as possible. In this article, we will look at the process of calibrating your dye sublimation printer, some areas where you can get into trouble and a few techniques to maximize the final result. First, let’s discuss the goal. Obviously, we want to have an accurate colour match. The greys must be neutral and colours vibrant, but not oversaturated. The road to getting there requires a thorough understanding of seven key steps, which can be applied to almost all kinds of printing processes.

Dye sublimation challenges: Blotches

Modelled blotches spots usually point to too much moisture in the paper. This is even more pronounced on hard non-porous material. Use additional layers of Kraft paper to absorb excess moisture. Further, your environment should not have a high amount of humidity.

Blurred/ doubled image

The ink is bleeding, or the paper is moving during the pressing, which causes a ghosting image. If you pull the paper off too soon or your transfer is done too quickly, you can get rough edges.

Transfer lines

These can be alleviated by reducing the pressure. Over time you will learn how much pressure is required for various times and pressure. This is only determined by testing.

Faded images

One would think a longer transfer time would yield a denser black. The reality is dye sublimation chemistry will reach a point where too much heat and transfer time decreases the ink’s density. If you’re getting brown blacks, first decrease the time in five-second increments. I always start with time and then pressure.

Colour management walk-through

Every RIP software will walk you through similar steps when creating a new media setup. It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss every step in detail, but let’s focus on the ones with the biggest impact.

Step 1: Ensure your environment is not too humid, as this can cause issues with dye-sub.

Step 2: Calibrate your device. Check the nozzles and alignment. If your printer has an internal calibration, then that needs to be done.

Step 3: Choose the optimal printer settings, print speed, and dot pattern. My trick is to look at what the manufacturer has done in the past. Their colour may not be ideal for your printer but they usually know the optimal combination of printer settings to use.

Step 4: Determine primary ink restrictions. This is one of the most important steps as it will determine the gamut of your printer. Most printers, when unrestricted, will print too much ink. Your goal is to find the most ink that gives you the highest chroma. If your device that can show you LCH, then you can use the C portion for chroma. As you measure each swatch from light to dark, the chroma will increase. At one point, the chroma will stop increasing and may even decrease. Select the swatch with the highest chroma value. Your RIP may also display a graph where you can toggle from density to chroma. Always use chroma.

Step 5: Linearization just needs to be measured and I accept the RIP settings here. 

Step 6: Determine total ink limit, which is the most difficult one to figure out. Here are a few pointers. If you have over-inking at 200 to 300 per cent, and that area is wet or bleeding, then you need to stop and go back to Step 4 and reduce ink there. Ideally, you want the ink limit to be between 300 and 360. Getting to this stage may mean going back and forth between this step and step 4. When reducing in step 4, start with yellow, as it is the wateriest ink, then cyan, black and, lastly, magenta. We never have enough magenta. I test the ink limit target by rubbing various areas to see if the ink is wet or damp and if it scuffs easily.

Step 7: When profiling, you want to measure at least 900 patches. More patches will give you more accurate spot-colour matching. I start with the middle GCR setting. Start your backs at 40.

In conclusion, colour management is an essential part of the printing process, as it helps to ensure the colours of the printed image match the original as closely as possible. By following the above steps and using the right equipment, you can improve colour match and achieve excellent results with your printing projects. 

Angus Pady is a G7-certified expert who has helped customers resolve colour management challenges for over 30 years. You can reach him at angus.pady@fujifilm.com.

At that time we were highly focused on developing the best response for our existing market while maintaining a keen eye on the future.

In the past the printing industry based operational strategies on production capacity availability. But that no longer works for today’s fast paced, quickly changing, and highly demanding times. Now an effective strategy is shaped around the needs of customers. They want greater flexibility, smaller runs, and more services.

With the decision made to go 100 per cent digital, we started our investigation and analysis.

It revealed uncertainties, complex criteria, and difficulty in drawing an objective road map. It was a challenging start where certainties were scarce and elusive. Given this backdrop it would have been easy to rethink and postpone the decision, even if we knew that taking the road to 100 per cent digital was inevitable. However, vision and determination moved us forward.

For those who are interested in learning from our experience, there are three major areas that should be considered and I will share some reflections on each of them. Spoiler: having reliable and committed partners is key.

1 Changing technology

Any comfort we felt with the printing equipment we understood disappeared when making comparisons between devices that were never unequivocal or fully quantifiable. That reality was ultimately a blessing for Tórculo. When making the investment decision we soon understood that just as important as the web press and its performance was the overall quality of the supplier. No machine performs the transformation on its own. Plus, the risk of obsolescence in investments that have long payback periods.

2 Transforming people

Tórculo is an ecosystem in itself, as are all printing companies as far as I know. Ecosystems are formed by technologies, processes, and people. The first two are clearly digitizable, but what about people? This can be quite a challenge. Digital transformation affects the collective but ignoring the fact that the collective is made up of individuals can have far reaching consequences. In production it will be people who will have to move from the understood and known sheetfed offset technology to the new and unknown web-fed inkjet press. We believe a good operator is always a good operator, and our team has proven it. As a result, we just needed good training and a plan to involve them and allay their fears.

Fears, however, are not confined to the production floor. Sales and marketing teams have spent years, decades even, gaining the trust of customers with offset technology at the heart of the offering. Suddenly, the addition of a digital inkjet press required a rethink of strategies, targets, and value propositions.

3 Managing increased production

In Tórculo, we have always employed good levels of automation, but our transformation forced us to climb one more step. Or several. The digital technology raised our production capacity and our ability to take it to market.

The installation and testing processes that ran in parallel in our workshop and in our prepress area raised some potentially significant problems, dilemmas and needs.

Today I can proudly say that Tórculo’s workflow is one of the best in the industry for robustness, flexibility, and automation. We believe the future value of the graphic industry rests in how we respond to all the changes and transformations that our clients are also experiencing.

Jacobo Bermejo is CEO of Tórculo Communications, a graphic communications specialist in Spain

Workflow automation solutions are designed to deliver crucial flexibility, but it requires smart technology implementation and the right platform to build for success. But the platform alone isn’t enough. It takes the right people to leverage the platform. Alone neither the platform nor the people will be enough to keep up with the changing pace. Here is how to create the ecosystem to support flexible optimization.

Rationalization  

To take advantage of opportunities to engage global teams to streamline operations requires a workflow that removes those time-consuming, inefficient manual processes that plague many print environments. The goal is to enable job preparation and approval workflows that provide real-time visibility into each workflow step. Dashboards are an excellent way to show the status of each relevant touchpoint during job preparation, print, and finishing. They can be visible to team members in any location and provide alerting mechanisms to deal with bottlenecks or job issues in real-time instead of waiting for the next shift.

To rationalize a strategy that embraces team members in multiple time zones, consider the number of steps in the workflow from the point the job enters the shop to the point it gets onto a press. In most cases, there are dozens of steps, and some have loops that extend the time it takes to get a job ready for production. Automation can make it possible to streamline preparation, but there are always those jobs that need extra attention. An all-shore strategy can ensure that no job waits for the next shift to start for resolution. The combination of all-shoring and automation empowers people to create a smart, streamlined workflow that’s flexible, configurable, and adaptable.

Templatization

An essential element in automation is creating a process that will work for most situations. Think of it as building a workflow template for each type of job that comes through the shop. This is the essence of lights-out manufacturing, removing touchpoints and the potential errors. Templatizing the workflow results in improved efficiency and cost savings, which every shop can use.

Most modern workflow software permits workflow rules and templates, and many make it easy. Using templates to normalize the everyday processes makes it easy to build invaluable repeatability that meets your exact specifications. Those processes, once established, are easier to automate.

Configuration

Every business is different, so configuration is essential. Solutions that make it easy to set up dashboards modularly and configure them without custom coding are ideal.

Embracing an all-shore future

How we work is changing dramatically. It’s the reality of doing business in 2022. Enabling all-shore processes means embracing multiple locations, various time zones, and countless individual work environments while servicing them all seamlessly. Think about all-shore as encompassing all the people you need to work with and allowing them to work on projects securely with appropriate access checkpoints and visibility dashboards at whatever scale you need. It’s all possible with the right technology.

Pat McGrew is an industry expert, analyst and managing director of McGrewGroup.

We don’t all need bespoke packages

We’ll start with perhaps the most basic and obvious point: the largest chunk of the market is still serving long-run jobs for packaging that are destined for the shelves of bricks-and-mortar retailers.

As Montserrat Peidro, former head of Heidelberg’s digital print business, remarks, “The main advantages of digital print can be quantified in terms of cost per box in short/mid runs, in faster turnaround times resulting in a leaner supply chain and in its ability to produce unique boxes profitably. Examples include packages with security features, unique identifiers for track and tracing of goods, codes for connected packaging and those personalized for a specific individual.”

Yet, there remains huge demand for generic packaging produced in high volumes and at high speeds. Analogue presses, which are considerably cheaper than the digital ones, still handle the bigger runs more cost effectively. This is hardly news, but those of us who get intoxicated by disruptive innovation could do well to remind ourselves of the enduring gravitational pull of simple mathematics. As long as not everyone needs bespoke, there will be a place for analogue.

Agile technology won’t accelerate time to market

That said, there is a significant and growing packaging market space where digital print can add value. Brand owners need to differentiate their multiple SKUs and increase frequency of marketing campaigns to maintain consumer attention. In this landscape, flexibility rather than raw throughput is key to productivity.

“The printing speed of analogue does not take into consideration all the presses’ set-ups, including colour calibrations, waste and plates making and mounting,” says Marcelo Akierman (HP Indigo marketing manager – EMEA region). “The time to market printing digitally is dramatically reduced; brand owners can do the proofing onsite and when the target is achieved sign on the final substrate.”

However, all too often the end user isn’t thinking as fast as the technology. As a major corrugated converter observed to me, they can handle an artwork change in little more than a day on traditional presses. If the brand owner’s marketing sign-off takes days or weeks, is it possible the bottleneck is as much a business systems problem as a technological one? Brand owners need to become as agile as digital presses if they are to leverage their full potential, and they need to get used to making more decentralized marketing decisions.

Harnessing the value of digital print will rely on integration into the wider value chain.

“We often forget it, but packaging production is more than printing and part of a longer supply chain, from packaging design to printers, converters, packers and retailers (online or physical),” reminds François Martin, senior communication advisor at Bobst. “Printing digital will save a few hours, even a few days, in a process taking months. The entire packaging production chain needs to be rewritten. Digital printing will be part of the new Industry 4.0 packaging landscape, but the digitalization of an entire process will be the most important element.”

Conversely, as analogue print technologies are adapted to function within this connected ecosystem, they will become quasi-digital themselves.

Leveraging consumer data enables brands to communicate in a personally meaningful way. Photo © Mast3r / Adobe Stock

We are still rewriting the rules

Digital print facilitates an altogether more intimate degree of consumer engagement just as the broader digital transformation of our world is making consumers expect gratifying communication from brands.

“There’s no question customization is one of the biggest trends driving the adoption of digital package printing,” says Donald Allred, VP of packaging, Memjet. “When packaging is produced in a late-stage customization process, using digital printing is not only possible, but also is preferred by brands that want to connect with their consumers by adding personalized messages and images to their packaging. These messages can include support of regional sports teams, seasonal messages, and/or images of local interest. Compare this close customer relationship with the more traditional process whereby brands ship products to distribution centres. In this supply chain, products are distributed to vast geographic and demographic markets with little opportunity for personalized packaging experiences.”

However, return on investment will increasingly require more sophisticated strategies than the now familiar ‘product with your name on it’. This is a new game, and the rules of how to create meaningful experiences through customized packaging are still being written.

“Personalization goes far beyond customizing or styling products,” suggests Jose Gorbea, head of brands & agencies at HP GSB EMEA. “It’s about intelligently curating and shaping the whole experience for those in our community: makers, designers and consumers alike. One industry shift is personalized storytelling with mass customization seen as the next frontier for global brands. With digital print, design runs that used to number in the tens of thousands can now vary unit by unit, making labels, cases, POS materials and direct mail more relevant and personal than ever before. Companies can now target messages directly at individual groups of customers as well as join social movements (as seen in Smirnoff’s #chooselove campaign). The speed of digital printing also allows brands to interact with real-world events. For example, you can now print the daily news on a package to communicate product freshness.”

Amid such endless possibilities and several impressive applications there is also a sense that brands are only beginning to map the new landscape. If digitally printed packaging represents a cultural, as well as a technological, revolution, I have the sense that what we are seeing today is an influential counterculture rather than mainstream.

Inertia and investment

Another consideration is that industry earthquakes don’t always happen overnight. Even in industrialized countries many fields were being cultivated by manual labour decades after the invention of the mechanical plough. We tend to embrace change when we must, especially when we suspect ROI may be remote. Speak to any of the big players about the enablers of digital print and eventually they will acknowledge that getting the market to understand the opportunity is the key challenge.

“Brands are facing more SKUs and shorter runs but are quite busy in their day-to-day pre-occupations to understand that digital can go beyond the ‘special projects only’,” muses Klaus Lammersiek, marketing manager, HP Indigo Labels & Packaging EMEA. “Meanwhile, if they don’t have digital, converters may prefer still to keep running longer runs in their existing presses without the need to invest further. The solution comes in educating both brands and converters about the possibilities of digital. Every day we can see more and more digitally printed products in the supermarkets and online.”

Montserrat Peidro, former head of Heidelberg’s digital print business, echoes this perspective.

“In my personal experience in recent years, the main enablers have been the ability to integrate digital technology into existing pre- and post-press processes, sell new benefits to customers and manage lots of smaller jobs per day in an efficient way with as few touchpoints as possible,” she remarks. “But not all companies are aware of these enablers or take these topics into account when planning their marketing investments.”

COVID and the catalyst of direct-to-consumer

I made the connection above between digital printing and the broader digital transformation of manufacturing. Of course, with online retail we can see this in the context of a wider digital transformation of our culture and commerce. Even before the Coronavirus changed everything, it seemed inevitable that the irresistible rise of e-commerce would be the ultimate catalyst for growth in digitally printed packaging. 

In the first place, the online brand or vendor has a much more personal relationship with me than the traditional shopper in a conventional supermarket. It’s a one-on-one communication. The brand knows who I am, where I am and what I like. It is going to deliver a product, possibly tailored to my needs, directly to me.

As a direct-to-consumer brand of a different sort (and on a very different scale) to the FMCG giants, Packaging Europe (the author’s firm) conducted a customization experiment in 2019. We distributed our magazine in corrugated sleeves featuring 20 localized designs and printed on a HP PageWide C500 press. The #unboxingEurope campaign got a warm response from our readers – ‘love’ that came from the ability to leverage individual subscriber data. Knowing our readers’ location enabled us to give each one not just a nice surprise, but also a personally meaningful one.

The same dynamic applies to the new and emerging supply chains, vastly accelerated by COVID that are based around personalized consumption, and served by emerging direct-to-consumer, on-demand or subscription models. In this ecosystem, relevant communication that reflects the consumer’s needs and identity are likely to distinguish the most successful brands. Late-stage customization, at least in higher value goods, will surely become the norm. 

Meanwhile, successive advances in technology are cumulatively eroding all those barriers to adoption. We’re going to see improved quality, higher speeds, lower costs, more viable market entry points, seamless integration and developments in design tools such as algorithmically generated iterative engines.    

Tim Sykes is brand director at Packaging Europe. This article was originally published in Drupa Essentials of Print Series. It was also featured in the May/June 2022 issue of PrintAction.

The gloss and colour appearance of paperboard or synthetic substrates is a vital visual attribute in marketing packaged products. The introduction of optical brightener agents (OBAs) on inline dispersion UV or AQ coatings in the printing process enhances the finished products.

Recently, I inspected various products at a supermarket in Dubai. To my surprise, many products had overprint coatings with OBAs. Cereal boxes substrate appeared whiter and cleaner. On close inspection with a UV light, the inks revealed traces of fluorescence. Also, it appeared they have more flexible packaging for snacks such as cookies, power bars and ice cream than in Canada and the US.

Cost could make flexible packaging an ideal choice, even for high-end premium ice creams such as Quanta triple chocolate from IFFCO, my favourite.

The OBAs have a definite shelf life, but they last long enough to support the customer’s demand. Exposure to sunlight tends to fade OBAs.

For process control with OBAs in dispersion coatings, operators can visually check its application and be alerted to defects and reduce waste due to the coating’s applications.

Process excellence supported by the right tools becomes seamless. Effortless process controls introduce smooth operations. Workers support these kinds of process control without supervision as they understand the purpose and appreciate effective and practical applications.

The strategy of introducing OBAs in the offset or flexo printing process is low cost. It helps reduce material waste and rework, particularly in packaging manufacturing.

Brightness vs. whiteness

Optical brighteners (OB), OBAs, fluorescent brightening agents (FBAs) or fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) are chemical compounds. They target the same objective and are used in many industries to enhance blue light and minimize the amount of yellow light, creating brightening visual effects to make things appear whiter.

These chemical compounds absorb light in the ultraviolet and violet, ranging from 340 to 370 nm of the electromagnetic spectrum and re-emit glowing fluorescence light in the blue region between 420 and 470 nm.

The colour appearance of paperboard is vital for the esthetic value of packaged products. There is a level of expectation and instant association of the products’ quality with their visual packaging appearance. Its visual impact precedes the tactile experience. Substrates used in packaging have three optical properties relevant to finished products: colour, brightness and whiteness.

Brightness and whiteness are not the same. They have different properties with measurable parameters. The brightness appearance is the ability of a substrate to reflect blue light. Whiteness measures paper or substrate in the same way the eye sees it.

Using OBAs in coatings, the average observer’s lab values will remain unchanged even though they might display modest and measurable changes within the colour space—the higher the whiteness, the substrate appears whiter.

The brightness-meter tester determines the brightness level by measuring the intensity of the light reflection diffused on a scale of 100.

Brightening agents emit glowing fluorescence light. Photo: © Ruslan Gilmanshin / Adobe Stock

The whitest white

Titanium dioxide was an essential ingredient for papermaking, plastic and polymers for its very high reflective index for over one hundred years.Its use didn’t decrease because the Agency for Research on Cancer flagged and classified titanium dioxide as possibly carcinogenic to humans. The decline was due to economic and environmental reasons.

These additives’ effectiveness in enhancing the visual appearance of colour fabrics, plastics and printing substrates is well known. They produce a pleasing and whitening effect in many recycled substrates and paperboard stocks in order to compensate for the printing papers and board surface’s yellowish or grayish visual appearance.

Coating applications and visual inspections with OB

This procedure assists inline visual inspection of dispersion coatings applications on the fly. It is effective as it helps to check, identify and eliminate waste at the source.

This method is applicable on any substrate, and is used mainly in the packaging and label industry.

This method is accomplished by including OBAs in UV and aqueous dispersion coatings. The changes required to coating formulas should not increase the overhead costs.

Coating manufacturers would establish the ideal amount of OBAs to make possible the visual inspections, which typically range from one to five per cent of the OBAs’ components.

The coating applications are a simple, yet essential aspect of the finished product. The additional ingredient will not alter the coating’s gloss properties or the final visual appearance of the printed products. It will help assess the coating application’s evenness, minimize, or eliminate flaws and defects and enhance the substrate’s brightness.

Quality advantages of coating with OBAs

1. Faster visual quality checks of coated areas during make-readies.

2. Helps to inspect coating layout, glue flaps and knockout during production.

3. Allows checking for smoothness and surface penetration of coating applications in paperboard.

4. Assists in checking for unwanted coating spillover or coating misting that could block paperboard piles.

5. Allows checking for evenness and low spots or unevenness during production runs.

6. Increase the finished product’s brightness as OBAs enhance the product surface.

7. Allows accurate register for spot gloss or matte coating applications.

Required tools

To inspect coated areas of the printed sheet, the press operator, supervisor or QC staff only need a UV-A type of flashlight. Additional magnifying instruments aren’t required. 

Jan Sierpe is an experienced and informed technologist focused on process optimization and waste reduction. He can be reached at sierpe.jan@gmail.com. For more info, visit his website, www.sierpe.ca.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of PrintAction.

While the certainty with which predictions are made is by no means sure, even the ones formed on the soundest of information have been considerably challenged by the current unprecedented times.

These times are unlikely to see swift improvement.

It is clear the impact of the pandemic is going to shape the industry for far longer than any us of would ideally want.

Despite this operational backdrop, IDC, the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology research, analysis and advisory firm,  has set out its thoughts for the future in its Worldwide Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions 2022 Predictions report.

There are three in particular we expect to define the print production environment.

Prediction 1: By 2023, 60 per cent of managed print services customers will rate the vendor’s sustainability programme as a major factor in choosing a print service provider.

We have already seen how COP 26 has begun to accelerate the discussions on how companies will manage their impact on the climate. As part of that, we believe there will be an increased focus on optimizing supply chains and a greater focus on ensuring goods and services are procured with fewer CO2 emissions.

Prediction 2:  Sixty per cent of organizations will move to a subscription-based model for print and print-related services to support the needs of the hybrid workforce.

Prediction 3: By 2024, 70 per cent of global industrial print users will have adopted digital printing technology into their production/manufacturing operations. We think this will take the form of cost effective, flexible, non-impact inkjet.

While these forward-looking statements are being made in the face of a constantly changing environment, they take into account the core elements of an industry that is continually evolving.

More recently that evolution has been rapid and agile in response to a harsher climate but, importantly, substantial change was already underway.

How do you see 2022 shaping up and what are your thoughts on these predictions and how they will shape your coming year?

Eef de Ridder is vice-president of the Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe.

Automated factories are the path forward. Today’s smart factories can gather actionable data and insights, connect production processes and deliver visibility to all stakeholders. Critical for print shops, these developments in automation aren’t confined to the physical side of production; an automated document factory (ADF) applies the concepts of intelligent factory production to the workflow behind document production to track every touchpoint through the workflow.

The author’s company, Solimar Systems, has developed a formula for print shop success: PDF + JDF = ADF. Businesses have been building out elements of their ADFs because they need more end-to-end visibility, transparency and optimization within output management. Let’s break down each component of the equation, before taking a look at the formula as a whole.

Get familiar with the formats

Gartner defines an ADF as “an architecture and set of processes to manage the creation and delivery of mission-critical, high-volume digital documents. ADF applies factory production concepts to document production — raw materials, including data and preparation instructions, enter the ADF, where they are transformed into digital documents and prepared for delivery.” An ADF generates a positive impact on the bottom line, thanks to efficiencies that can save costs.

One key to an efficient ADF is standardization on a print file format. Most people are familiar with PDFs. When PDF readers became available free of charge, the genie was let out of the bottle, and the format became a dominating force. It is the reason why trillions of pages are now stored in PDF. The format is the clear winner over legacy data streams. PDF facilitates a reactive workflow. Its features are specifically designed for electronic workflows and collaborative processes that require approval. Even the oldest versions of PDF provide amazing functionality, as these capabilities continue to evolve with encryption updates and additional functionality.

Another key to an efficient ADF is workflow communication and interchange. Job definition format (JDF) is a set of guidelines for that information interchange in a communication workflow, making interoperability a reality, enabling users to track the real-time status of multiple jobs, creating an audit trail for all jobs and collecting data on consumable usage. The shift away from legacy content formats, including traditional job tickets, and toward the more open standard of PDF, requires a complementary data exchange vehicle. This allows for a more holistic view of the print shop floor and facilitates the creation of status tracking and recording of valuable data. JDF is a common approach.

JDF has had something of a bumpy road, with a reputation for being vendor-specific. Finding implementations that work reliably has been a challenge. It has also been difficult to build complex jobs, such as cross-product ganging. Between these challenges and barriers to entry such as the lack of a Windows driver, JDF has seen slower uptake than expected since it was introduced in the 1990s.

However, JDF and job messaging format (JMF) specifications can be leveraged to implement an ADF and boost the efficiency and visibility of print production. JMF makes JDF dynamic. The combination enables production hardware and software systems in a JDF workflow to communicate with administration components and system controllers, permitting data exchange and visibility in real-time.

Lack of visibility is a source of anguish in under-automated production environments. A holistic view of the shop floor is essential to management who need to manage inventory costs, labour rates, and invoice accurately and in a timely manner. On the production side, visibility on a more granular level is required, from knowing when a job has arrived, to its condition and what needs to occur before it gets on the press to when it’s on the press, when it’s in finishing and when it’s launched for mail.

This is where the JDF/JMF combination makes a difference. It enables users to gather ink and media data following job runs and feed that back to the system, allowing production managers to audit and compare what was estimated versus what they received. This data provides accurate insights into the actual running costs.

Right solution 

When it comes to choosing the right solution for your ADF, you have three options: you can outsource, purchase a ready-made solution or build a system yourself. Outsourcing can be an affordable option. However, it is important to consider output management is often regarded as a cost centre rather than a revenue centre, putting pressure on organizations to be more cost-efficient. A home-grown solution requires a highly skilled team, and often means functionality is limited.

Visibility with the ability to track and report on each process in real-time makes the ADF integral to an automated and efficient print production environment. While the automation shift has seen adoption, there is still a lot of room for organizations to evolve their document factories to replace outdated models for tracking and managing information.

Jonathan Malone-McGrew is senior director of engagement, Solimar Systems.

The biggest challenge to convert PSPs with large print volumes being produced on A3/B3 electrophotography large production printers to B2 was the high capital investments of the B2 printers. Another challenge was to shift more offset print volumes to B2 digital, as even though B2 has lower running costs than the A3/B3 electrophotography devices, there is still a big gap versus offset.

What is shifting things is the new introduction of B3 inkjet presses with commercial print quality by Canon (iX series) and Xerox (Baltoro-Color Accelerator Module). These printers provide high productivity and duty cycles at a lower capital investment cost than B2, therefore offering lower TCOs in most cases. The B3 inkjet pressure on B2 should make B2 manufacturers reduce their capital investment costs to better compete with B3.

Fujifilm JetPress 750 HS can print 5,400 B2 sheets per hour. Photo courtesy Fujifilm

Fujifilm JetPress 750 HS

At virtual.drupa earlier this year, Fujifilm announced its new JetPress 750 HS, which brings greater productivity from its successor (5,400 B2 sheets per hour vs. 3,600) in all media weights. The compromise there is that the resolution drops to 1200 x 600 dpi. The new printer may also not need primer while printing at 1200 x 600 dpi, reducing the running cost considerably. New inks might reduce the cost of consumables, too. Finally, Fujifilm protects customer investments by making the 750 HS field upgradable.

Ricoh B2 Pro Z75

Ricoh also announced its new B2 Pro Z75 inkjet printer to compete in the expanding B2 and B3 markets. The device runs with aqueous inks at 4,500 B2 sheets per hour and can print on a variety of substrates, including offset coated papers up to 400 gsm. The B2+-size is 23 x 29 in. at up to 1200 x 1200 dpi. The new drying system is expected to deliver good print quality, even on thin paper.

The large production cutsheet inkjet market is expected to be busy and even more competitive with roll-fed inkjet printers, what with more flexibility (variety of input drawers) and lower capital investment costs. Large production cutsheet B2 and B3 inkjet devices are expected to capture a great part of the print volume consolidation happening in the market due to lower TCOs and commercial print quality.

It will be exciting and interesting to watch this healthy cutsheet B2 and B3 inkjet battle as printers try to shift more offset print volumes to digital, while gaining as much electrophotography business as they possibly can.

This article was originally published on www.keypointintelligence.com. It also appeared in the September 2021 issue of PrintAction.

As you might know, Drupa was first postponed, and Messe Düsseldorf was hoping to hold the trade show based on a concept they had developed for another event that took place on the same fairgrounds in the fall of 2020. These plans were also derailed due to the ongoing pandemic and resulting travel restrictions.

Drupa happens only every four years, and the exhibiting companies usually use it to release new products and significant upgrades to existing products. The Drupa organizers decided to host a virtual version of the event, called virtual.drupa to not lose this momentum. It took place from April 20 to April 23, 2021. On the virtual.drupa website, companies were able to create their exhibitor profile and showcase their products.

Initially, the School of Graphic Communications Management was supposed to be part of the World Print Campus booth at Drupa, organized by our German partner university, the Hochschule der Medien (HdM) or Stuttgart Media University in Stuttgart, Germany. Since this was not possible, GCM set up a virtual booth.

The School posted some information about the curriculum, recent events like the GCM colloquium, and two showcases of student work from the past fall and winter semesters. The partner schools for the World Print Campus, such as Clemson University, also set up virtual booths.

Virtual.drupa had two conference streams set up for the four-day event. On top of the conference streams, web sessions were grouped by the six main areas of interest. These areas of interest are:

• Drupa Cube – engage, educate, entertain;
• Touchpoint packaging – discover trends, find solutions and visions;
• Touchpoint 3D fab + print;
• Drupa touchpoint textile; and
• Dna – Drupa next age.

Like with the in-person event, it is impossible to see everything or watch every presentation under these areas of interest. Also, if you wanted to see any talks or presentations live, you had to consider the six-hour time difference to Germany. For a few sessions, I got up a bit earlier to listen to the presentations at 6:00 a.m. Don’t worry if you didn’t have time to attend virtual.drupa. A video library of all presentations and conference streams is available.

Virtual.drupa used the Zoom platform. Therefore, recording any presentations or talks was easy. Another benefit of virtual.drupa was that you could register for free and access all these presentations and the conference streams.

I had a bit of a surreal experience during virtual.drupa. On April 20, 2021, I was enjoying presentations. One of the hosts, Chris Brow, was either announcing presentations by companies or was in one of the conference streams guiding the participants from one topic to the next. The next day, on April 21, I was hosting an event from the International Circle of Educational Institutes for Graphic Media and Management (IC) and the International Association of Research Institutes for the Graphic Arts Industry (IARIGAI), and I interacted directly with Chris Brow shortly before the event started. It was like watching a movie the day before, and the next day you are in the film yourself.

The IC and IARIGAI event was about bridging education, research and industry in graphic communication, print and media. For this event, IC and IARIGAI were able to secure speakers from Esko, HP, Intergraf and the Graphic Communications Education Association. Frank Romano, professor emeritus from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and print guru, gave the main address at this conference event. The speakers talked about the challenges the industry is facing regarding hiring young talent, changes in consumer tastes, and how the industry is supporting educational institutes around the world, so students get educated for this ever-evolving industry since the pace of change is increasing.

My colleagues from IC and IARIGAI told me afterward the event was well-received by the audience.  Having hosted many Zoom sessions myself as a professor, I have to say the virtual.drupa team managed all the sessions professionally and without any interruptions or the typical “You are on mute!”.

The virtual Drupa team has made a nice infographic about the event.

The infographic shows clearly how active the event was. Of course, the number of visitors is less than the actual Drupa event. The 2016 Drupa had 260,165 visitors from 183 countries and 1,828 exhibitors. One exciting aspect is that the 125 live web sessions had an average of 140 viewers. Having 140 viewers is quite a good number of attendees for web sessions. Nevertheless, virtual.drupa kept the momentum going.

One thing that was notably absent from virtual.drupa event was the launch of new products. According to Ralf Schlozer’s article published on WhatTheyThink.com, there were four exciting product launches. These launches were:

• EFI MCORR 1300 – a smaller version of the Nozomi;
• Fujifilm Jet Press 750S High Speed with an hourly sheet throughput of 5,400 sheets/h;
• Olbrich presented, together with Ricoh, a web-fed inkjet printer for vinyl wallcoverings and flooring; and
• Comexi launched the Digiflex inline inkjet bar for flexo presses, laminators and slitters with a print speed of up to 250 m/min or 820 ft/min. The Digiflex inline inkjet bar used UV inkjet inks. They also launched their D4 inkjet press that uses water-based inks and can be configured with four to eight colours. Depending on the selected print resolution, the press prints at 246 ft/min or 492 ft/min. The Digiflex bar should be available in October 2021, and the D4 press will be available sometime in 2022.

Even though virtual.drupa was just a shadow of the actual Drupa, it was important this event took place in order to remind everyone innovation is taking place in this industry all the time. Also, digital printing will make more and more inroads into jobs that were printed with conventional printing processes, and the industry needs to become more attractive to the young people who are about the enter the workforce. Everything is in flux, and the virtual.drupa event showed how future trade show events could be a combination of traditional and virtual components.

This is according to market research consulting firm Mordor Intelligence. Its Inkjet Printing Market – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 – 2026) report valued the global inkjet printing market at E34.29 ($51.5) billion  in 2020 and is expected to reach E41.36 ($62) billion at a compound annual growth rate of 3.11 per cent between 2021 to 2026.

Driving this growth is the huge investment being made in inkjet technology and the enhanced quality and productivity that today’s high speed inkjet devices deliver.

Innovative concepts and technological inventions featured in colour inkjet products provide the right balance between image quality, image durability, print speed, purchase price, and operational cost.

This combination became attractive for early adopter commercial printers enabling them to adapt their application offering and cost effectively transition analogue print to digital.

The marriage of high quality colour print, media flexibility and the ability to add variable content delivers a compelling business case and it is broadening digital inkjet’s effectiveness across different sectors.

Book printing, magazines and catalogues were all highlighted by Mordor as growth opportunities while Smithers reported all inkjet sectors were enjoying growth in its The Future of Inkjet Printing to 2025 early last year.

It said this was because inkjet suits the changing demands of print buyers because it can be more responsive to the preferences of consumers than analogue alternatives. The continuing technological developments, together with the greater experience of print service providers (PSPs), combine to make inkjet competitive against offset, flexo, gravure, screen and digital toner printing.

While the pandemic will have an impact on investment in the technology, the report’s statement remains true that as inkjet press performance improves, the economic crossover moves to longer runs. This makes it an ever more interesting opportunity.

It also future-proofs your operation by placing you at the forefront of this growth. It allows you to expand your application capabilities supported by the technology’s continuing evolution.

The report also pointed to inkjet’s ability to help PSPs become more agile and responsive to client requirements, deliver total variability cost effectively and print only what is needed on demand to cut waste and enable production and supply chain efficiency.

Sander Sondaal is director of Commercial Print Sales, Commercial and Industrial Printing Group, Ricoh Europe.

How do you demonstrate colour-accurate proofs on unusual substrates like films, foils and adhesives? It is difficult enough to control your own in-house processes and the wide variety of print production variables; never mind proving to customers that you can do it.

Previous solutions could create prototypes that only resembled the final product. Now it is possible to create prototypes that look and feel exactly like the final product. By connecting superior colour management software to extended gamut digital printers, anyone can produce exceptional, colour-accurate prototypes on a wide variety of substrates. It closes the gap between traditional prototyping and contract quality proofing.

Knowing what it will look like first

With the increased use of multi-colour printing and different combinations of inks types, substrates, screening, and finishes, package and label printing involve a lot of press fingerprinting, ink drawdowns and file manipulation.

Fingerprinting, or press/printer profiling, is difficult to do and, conducted by experts, can cost many thousands a day. All processes, whether conventional or digital, are affected by dynamic changes in environment and printing conditions. The goal is to create a repeatable “golden state” that can be maintained. This is all possible. Using the latest profiling technology, a print provider can easily predict press performance and determine quality characteristics. From past live jobs, with minimal input like a colour bar, or a few measurements from known referenced live areas, a knowledgeable service provider can create an exceptionally accurate brand colour or target press reference.

Different printing technologies, and the variety of service providers and end output printing conditions lead to deviations. ‘Please match to previous’ is now more common regardless of your printing process. By leveraging spectral data profiling and conversion technology—which precisely predicts the overprinting of process and spot or gamut expanding colours— users can avoid lengthy correction loops on press before running a job. Printing process, substrates, and finishing enhancements are taken into consideration. If parameters are similar enough, an accurate prediction proof, separation strategy or direct-to-production material prototype can be quickly calculated without the need to reprofile your end output device— whether conventional flexo, offset, or the wide variety of digital reproduction technologies available.

With the right combination of process controls, profiling software and procedures, it is possible to precisely and repeatedly predict the colour appearance of any combination of inks, substrate, and finishes of the final desired product. Combinations of spot colours or gamut expanding inks with conventional CMYK can be accurately reproduced before the job gets to press. Once a press fingerprint or printer profile is finalized, the prediction of output device behaviour can be accurately predicted to ensure that customer expectations are met. All involved in the project can be satisfied that brand colours are attained, and we all are able to profitably meet our objectives.

Printing wide gamut on a wide variety of substrates

Rachel Desjardins performs quality control duties. Photo: Autumn
Graphics.

In choosing a device that can reproduce a job without going to production equipment, the Epson SureColor S80600 solvent printer is an interesting option. While satisfying the need to reproduce vivid colour, it is equally nimble in its ability to cover the wide gamut of colour to demonstrate accurate proofs, from paper to finished product prototypes. Many different materials are available, including sealable pouch films, shrink wrap films, metallized foils, folding carton boards, and laminate heat transfers to actual printing material.

The printer can be calibrated within tight tolerances to ensure consistent performance and colour reproduction stability. It bridges the gap between a contract colour proof on inkjet paper and direct-to-substrate laminated simulations from the past, with faster print speeds. All of this can be done with simple integration into a supported colour proofing system.

Because of the printer’s small droplet size, even halftone dots can be replicated. This is not a simulation, but the exact dots from the same final files that existing workflows ultimately image to plate. Potential problems such as moirés and incorrect trapping settings are visible in advance, via the proof.

Leaving creation of colour accurate prototypes to itself

Based in London, Ontario with a production facility in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Autumn Graphics Ltd. is a privately-owned company providing pre-media production, plate production, brand management, 3D packaging development, print production technical services, and packaging lifecycle workflow tools. It has served consumer product companies, converters, printers, and advertising agencies since 1982. By continuing to invest in technology, people, processes, and research and development, Autumn Graphics secures the ongoing success of both itself and its customers.

Prior to inkjet prototypes, Autumn Graphics used transfer systems to provide proofs on a substrate. They were looking for a solution that would enable them to increase prototype quality for complex packaging designs and achieve a better colour match for the final print result.

“By transitioning to 100-per-cent inkjet proofing rather than lamination systems, we determined we could produce more efficient, cost effective, and accurate prototypes,” says Ben Abray, president of Autumn Graphics.

“We wanted to grow our inkjet proofing options rather than other systems, and determine what tools could simulate as many types of printed results as possible,” adds Hugh Wilson, Autumn Graphics technical services manager. “The ability to more accurately simulate print conditions without requiring press trials would be really helpful. A graphic trial on press, of course, is the best way to prevent surprises—dealing with issues from ink, anilox, etc. However, if we could use a good predictive model to represent what may happen down the road, that would be very useful.”

Autumn Graphics invested in GMG colour management technology about seven years ago. While they rely on its colour accuracy, another important piece was the remote proofing. They can send accurate colour files to remote calibrated devices anywhere in the world.

“GMG ColorProof was reasonably straightforward to implement,” recalls Wilson. “The GMG OpenColor learning curve took just a little longer because it is very different than typical colour tools. Its fingerprinting takes advantage of sophisticated, proprietary spectral prediction technologies.”

Autumn Graphics invested in its Epson SC-80600 a bit less than a year ago. Its colour gamut was large enough and output was reasonably fast enough, so they could create prototypes on a wider range of substrates. It allowed them to remove slower, non-inkjet proofing options and replace them with more efficient technology to create colour-accurate prototypes.

From left, Jay Oudekerk, colour correction operator and Corey Douglas, customer service representative. Photo: Autumn Graphics.

Autumn Graphics had worked with an outside service for prototypes, but it cost a significant amount of money.

“Prepress proofs have always been accurate. However, the accuracy of prototypes has taken a step forward,” Abray says. “It lets us produce more prototypes, more efficiently, on specialty substrates without the same subsequent increase in human resource and production costs.”

Creating customer expectations is something you don’t do in production. “With prototypes, one of the challenges is that we have to send, fairly quickly and inexpensively, a sample with reliable colour. We produce any proof or prototype with colour management based on the profile we created from the actual flexo or offset press that will run the job, accurately representing process and spot colours,” Wilson notes.

Using the new process not only has cut production costs, but has also reduced shipping costs and timelines.

“It has given us the ability to achieve compressed deadlines for proofs that require different substrates,” Abray says. “In the past, we would have planned for longer lead times to generate our prototypes. But now we expect shorter lead times, condensing time to market.”

While the cost of one prototype is not prohibitive, imagine if a brand owner wants to see a number of sample prototypes that, ultimately, do not go to market.

“Our system offers the brand considerable savings. And, the ability to produce accurate prototypes really helps take the surprise out of the process,” Wilson says.

“Our responsibility is to show samples that represent what can be produced on the press, so that the customer does not have unachievable expectations,” Arbay says. “Many brand owners still need to see what a physical prototype looks like. Now, they can see it in accurate colour.”

Erik Schmitt is GMG director of sales for Canada.

This article was originally published in the May 2020 issue of PrintAction. Click here to check it out.

According to the Printing Industries of America, by the end of 2019, the print industry should see up to a 2-percent increase in revenues. Even with the growing trend to go paperless and the increase in e-books and other digital publications, the printing industry has been seeing yearly growth since 2011.

The continued growth for digital printing
Printing digitally does not require printing plates and the setup time that traditional offset printing requires. Because of this, digital printing continues to grow in popularity for printers and customers. The faster turnaround times, more flexibility, and the increase in personalization capabilities push digital printing forward as technology advances.

At The H&H Group, we use digital printing technologies for many projects and expect to see an increase in digital printing as more companies require shorter runs or print pieces on non-traditional materials.

Expansion of on-demand printing
Traditionally, print shops would not print just one copy or a small run of any print piece. The labor and time involved in the offset printing process made single-copy and short-run pieces expensive and out of reach.

Digital printing capabilities made on-demand printing services a possibility by being more cost-effective and efficient. On-demand printing is now easier than ever with digital printing capabilities and technological advances.

Increased personalization
Emerging trends – like short-run custom print pieces or self-publishing– require an increased level of personalization, and on-demand printing capabilities provide just that. The demand for increased personalization continues to grow as technological printing advances create more project opportunities for individuals and businesses.

On-demand printing pieces include posters, flyers, invitations, and other materials that require a short-run or specific customizations between each run or each copy.

Improved flexibility for customers
Every year, new printing capabilities bring more flexibility to customers, and 2020 print industry trends don’t look any different. As technology advances, you can expect faster turnaround times, more print material options, and the ability to create better custom marketing materials.

The ability to print with more flexibility for customers will open the door to more print opportunities that were not available before because they were too costly or time-consuming.

Move towards more simplified designs
The minimalism trend continues to hold steady in our society as we see it more often in art, architecture, and even our lifestyles. It is no surprise that we see minimalism and simplified designs in print materials, and expect to continue seeing it increase in popularity in print industry trends for 2020.

A simplified design may create fewer barriers when printing. It may incorporate less clashing colors and graphic elements that could cause printing headaches. Especially with digital, on-demand printing, where color is sometimes an issue, a simplified design eliminates some barriers from design to print.

Adding AI to printing
Artificial intelligence (AI) is exploding into every aspect of our lives—think Apple’s Siri, increases in factory automation, or Amazon’s Alexa—and the print industry is not exempt from the growing use of AI.

The use of AI in printing makes a printer’s job easier by offering real-time data and production alerts, press automation, suggestions for equipment maintenance, and can even help protect our networks against security breaches.

Since many new printers work through Wi-Fi or at least have Wi-Fi capabilities, AI also allows mobile printing and automatic software updates or patches.

Increased support for sustainability
On-demand printing for customized materials like packaging includes a level of added sustainability because you only print what you need when you need it. You no longer have to print large quantities to keep the price down. And if you need to make changes down the road, you will have less wasted materials.

This article was written by The H&H Group.

“Rather than provide a fully immersive virtual experience, augmented reality enhances the real world with images, text, and other virtual information via devices such as heads-up displays, smartphones, tablets, smart lenses, and AR glasses,” he writes in his 2019 Forbes article. Seen as bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds, the technology has a broad range of applications, such as enriched advertising opportunities, mesmerizing video game experiences, and improved healthcare education, among many others.

A new partnership between Kellogg’s and Crayola aims to get consumers to interact and engage with their brands in a different way. The multinational food manufacturer has released limited-edition black-and-white cereal boxes in Australia, encouraging customers to colour in the packs for a chance to win a Crayola gift prize. As part of the ‘colour to win’ competition, entrants are asked to submit their works through an AR portal on their mobile device, and watch their pictures come to life.

In a sea of brightly coloured packages vying to catch the attention of shoppers, the cereal boxes have opted for a monochromatic approach that invites consumers to share their own creativity.

“Redesigning the packs of such an iconic brand was a real privilege and the trust Kellogg’s gave us to go as minimal as possible was great validation of the idea,” says Nate Martin, Creative Director of creative agency Kinetic, who worked on the campaign. “We’re intrigued to see how consumers interact with the campaign and are proud to be delivering one of the first instances of in-browser augmented reality for a [fast-moving consumer goods] brand.”

The effort exemplifies the combination of childhood classics – colouring books and breakfast cereal – with sophisticated mobile technologies.

“We’re particularly delighted to be partnering with Crayola for this campaign,” Kellogg’s Senior Shopper Activation Manager Felicha Hogan says. “As a first for Kellogg’s we’ve been able to strip the colour from our packs and hero our distinctive assets, whilst making sure shoppers can still find us on [the] shelf.”

In a 2018 interview with Adweek, Bryn Mooser, co-founder and then-CEO of Ryot Labs, said the near future of ubiquitous self-driving cars and smart displays will create all-new scenarios for consumers to entertain or inform themselves. “The camera on the back of the cellphone is the most important innovation in media since the printing press,” he said. “You can record your own stories, you can see what’s going on in the world, and you can also create this augmented reality world around you.”

A number of brands have recently experimented with AR-print integration. Madame Tussauds London last year introduced an AR-enabled guidebook that, when activated, unlocked a series of behind-the-scenes videos so visitors could see how the wax models were made.

Launched in fall 2017, the Ikea Place app lets customers see how its more than 2,000 furniture items would look and fit in their homes. Its first interactive experience was released in 2013 as part of the Ikea Catalogue app; an AR feature allowed potential buyers to place and view furniture items in their rooms, with a copy of the print catalogue placed in frame to help calculate the scale.

Meanwhile, the front and back covers of the May 2016 issue of The New Yorker featured the work of illustrator Christoph Niemann which could be animated using an AR app, a first for the American magazine. Through a smartphone or tablet, readers could bring Niemann’s illustrations of a subway car and city skyline to life, as well as several AR-enabled ads, transforming static print pages into an interactive experience. Similarly, the May 2016 issue of Ellegirl Japan created unique reader experiences as the first magazine in Japan to be linked entirely to an AR app. Readers could turn themselves into a virtual Ellegirl model, putting themselves on the cover of the issue by uploading a selfie, as well as watch fashion tutorials.

“Marketing in the information age is much more of an ‘experience,’ thus pushing out former methods that were static and less interactive. AR is allowing content to not be held prisoner to paper and screens,” writes Augment, an enterprise AR platform, in a 2016 blog post.

As brands strive to create innovative and captivating engagement opportunities, there’s no doubt AR will become an increasingly significant component of the cross-media experience.

This column was originally published in the July/August 2019 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

Below is a view on broad market segments:

• Process industries
Upstream oil and gas will be stressed, as supply will continue to outpace demand for most of 2019. Midstream, LNG, Refining and Chemicals are poised to fare well as modernization, value-chain integration, and performance transformation drive growth. Customers, in general, have embraced digital in a piece-meal fashion.

• Discrete industries
Two industries standout — Automotive, Electronics and Semiconductors. For automotive, plant capacity consolidation will be a major trend, as customers look to produce more models within a smaller plant footprint. Electric vehicles growth is also poised to challenge many OEMs, as current infrastructure is grossly under-prepared for scale. Throughput, product quality, traceability, recalls, visibility and workforce productivity are major areas of focus. As customers build digital factories of the future, single assembly lines can churn out multiple car models, consistent product quality can be achieved and sustainability is at the heart of all.

• Hybrids
The silver lining of the industrial markets — Lifesciences, F&B have for long been steady-growth verticals. There is more promise in them as customers embrace automation and digitalization to increase efficiency while reducing time to market. Apart from these two, my personal prediction is pertaining to the water industry. This is something to watch out for 2019 and beyond. Remember Flint, Mich. – The Global water infrastructure will see some fresh perspectives and movement. Smart cities investment, urbanization will mandate a change in water infrastructure.

There are tectonic shifts underway across all three aforementioned market segments. Let us look at the convergences first:

• Digital Transformation
It was the most spoken phrase in my conversations with clients. Everyone understands the benefits of digital, but there is a striking disconnect between awareness and action. For the beginning, we would need to classify industrial customers into three digital states of maturities: Enterprise digitizers (<10 percent of the market), selective digitizers (35 to 40 percent) and non-digitizers (45 to 50 percent). Digital also is not a one-size fits all approach but will need to be built around the industry and the specific customer pain points.

• Near-adjacency learning
At the outset, I am often observing customers looking at adjacent/other industries to see what can be learnt from them. For example, upstream oil and gas customers were taking a leaf out of automotive production processes. Similarly, there is quite a bit that can be learnt from healthcare/patient analytics and applied to asset performance management.

• Moving beyond the four walls
For a long time, manufacturing has been seen as something within the four walls of the plant. Rising complexity, inter-dependency, customer influence, advanced planning, and scheduling needs are steering customers to look at integrating the entire value-chain of manufacturing and not just as aspects of production that happen within the plant. Just imagine the power, if you have visibility over suppliers, customers, distributors, warehouses, tank farms, etc. It allows one to have total control of operations and also facilitates what-if scenarios to be better prepared in times of uncertainty.

• Convergence of AI with everything
Basic machine learning has been seen at play in areas such as asset performance management, pattern detection, quality management. I believe, the next phase is applying AI in the context of supply-chain, operational data, design, testing, quality, planning, scheduling, cybersecurity, computing, worker safety, sustainability, etc.

On the disruption side:

• Edge
De-centralized, at-source computing will see a significant offtake across the industrial space. Powerful chips will make way into next-gen edge product platforms along with modular capability to swap out intelligent algorithms based on context and situational requirements. This does not mean the end of cloud. Cloud will co-exist with edge computing. A case in point: Today’s sensors are used to measure point values and report. With edge capabilities, the sensor will not only sense the point value but also compare it with set point value (SPV) and will take action if the measured value is over or below the SPV. Total improvement in productivity, comprehensive automation of the workflows.

• Blockchain
As cited by one of the major automation vendors, we live in a world that is devoid of trust. Blockchain is the answer to that. Obvious application areas include digital traceability (parts, food/farm-to-fork, and luxury goods), custody transfer (hydrocarbons), logistic efficiency, goods handovers, remote services of assets, etc.

• True digital twins
Until 2017, it was very hard for me to find a true digital twin apart from the turbine world. In 2018, I was blown away by the number of examples I have seen in this space. From reciprocating compressors, robots, CNC machines, refinery and petrochemical twins. A ‘true digital twin’ is an approach that will allow customers to interact with the physical world, exchange insights with connected service providers, simulate scenarios and predict occurrences. It is not a fancy 3D model that allows you to take a 360-degree tour of the asset. Once this materializes plant managers would be able to unlock efficiencies that were previously inaccessible. I am excited for January 31, as the world will see a radical solution being introduced by a Japanese automation major.

• Containers, microservices
As digital products emerge, industries shift from centralized to de-centralized computing infrastructures – containers and microservices will be the meat and potatoes of application deployment + management. As per Docker, “A container is a standard unit of software that packages up a code and all its dependencies so the application runs quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another.” I might add infrastructure-agnostic software deployment. Edge, responsiveness, and latency will become top competitive differentiations in the future. To support these scaling applications that consume less space, less power will be the need. This is where microservices come in – It’s a wait and watch game. Like cloud and edge, we could see a co-existence of microservices and SOA.

• Immersive experiences
AR, VR, MR will create rich UX, that personnel may not even need training to do a job. Onboarding process may not need group settings and it might be just imparted using a VR headset. Truly a game changer in areas such as field maintenance, product design, iterations of design, and collaboration.

• Additive manufacturing (AM)
Still to catch up the subtractive manufacturing world, but making progress. I first experienced AM during my Mechanical Engineering days. I printed my first part using a FDM machine back in 1999/2000. The industry has come a long way and will evolve, as promising upstarts innovate with metal-based object printing. AM is not just for the discrete world but has implications to the process industry as well. If it takes off, AM might reduce a customer/manufacturer’s burden of holding multi-million/billion USD inventories. AM can help to print a required part just in time, in smaller distributed micro-factories that are closer to the customer as compared to monolithic central plant in some corner of the world.

Lastly, few words about business opportunities:

• New business models
Product margins are failing as commoditization hits. Still, complex engineered products enjoy healthy margins but this is not a sustainable strategy. A viable growth platform is artfully combining the worlds of products and product-associated services on the foundation of new business models. We predict the end of asset ownership within industrial markets. Customers will shed asset weights and become lighter on their balance sheets while outsourcing the performance of the asset to an OEM or a capable 3rd party solution provider.

• Design thinking
Currently, I am reading a book, which has inspired me to write about this. An aspect outlined in the book is that business plans are often built on past performance and current market conditions. This restrains the ability to truly be transformative. In today’s world of dynamic change, wherein technology refresh cycles are under 4 years, we need a design thinking based approach. For tomorrow’s problems – let’s not rely on age-old practices!

• Value will shift from hardware to software
We can predict that monolithic, expensive computing platforms within industrial space will slowly erode and give way to modular, affordable and swappable computing platforms that have the software intelligence. This will not happen in the DCS market in 2019 but is already happening in other areas which deploy unit controllers.

• Cybersecurity
This is a featured opportunity, by many. More awareness leads to investments and growth. Enough said we need action!

• Sustainability and safety
What were earlier cost centres, now will be seen as profit centres. Energy conservation and aligning safety practices will help customers reduce costs and increase availability.

Fun fact: Refining industry, on an average, account for 50 percent of their O&M costs to energy. Imagine the savings, if we are able to save 5 percent of it.

Ram Ramasamy is Industry Director at Frost & Sullivan.

Offering more value with digital graphics printing
We will see rapid advancements in digital colour printing in graphic communications, including new types of inks and toners that can create higher image quality and specialized effects. But there is another large new growth opportunity beyond document printing that will come from the ability to digitally print on a wider range of materials. Digital printing enables converters and manufacturers to offer more value to their customers, including late-stage customization, personalization and shelf-ready displays. Technology advancements will help deliver the benefits of digital with the image quality and run-cost of analogue printing on longer runs and a wider range of packaging media from foils and films to plastics and metals. By 2025, we will see inline digital presses in distribution centres and plants, and specialized printers and kiosks in retail stores that offer on-demand personalized printing.

Functional printing enables pervasive intelligence
Beyond graphics printing, the next frontier is functional printing. Today we see active functional inks that can change colour or structure depending on environmental factors, such as temperature. We also see early prototypes of printed electronics that enable sensing and monitoring at the individual package level. By 2025, we will see a more mature printed and hybrid electronics ecosystem, with software that will simplify electronics design and digital manufacturing systems that produce sensors, memory, communications and power options on flexible, low-cost smart tags or print them directly on products. Functional printing will give us the ability to extend intelligence pervasively to documents, products and packages. This will radically enhance existing services, from cold-chain logistics to environmental monitoring, enabling a host of new services that connect the physical and digital worlds. Print providers will deliver printed materials and analytics that result in outcome-based pricing models and greater value.

Structural printing from one to scale
Today 3D printing of parts, or structural printing, is mostly limited to rapid prototyping or specialized low-volume production. Even with current limitations, we see the value of specialized 3D printed parts. Artificial implants, for instance, can be customized to each patient and have highly specialized structures that mimic biological forms. Over the next few years, we will see new advances in high-speed 3D printing of plastics, metals and even composites, enabling large-scale manufacturing of production parts with advantages in design, weight and material properties over traditional processes. As these technologies mature, we will also see significant changes in supply chains. Sending off parts to be made in factories can be inflexible and time-consuming; structural printing allows parts to be made in an integrated process that reduces components and production steps.

Creating smart objects
Perhaps the most exciting potential is the combination of structural 3D printing and digital functional printing, where we will be able to create personalized smart products on demand. This value proposition is especially compelling in the consumer health and fitness industry. We have already seen smart clothing with embedded sensors and in the future, we will see even more personalized applications combining structural and functional properties. Take 3D-printed orthopedic inserts – with a 3D scan, it will be possible to print a custom insert and make it “smart” by embedding printed electronics to provide analytics and communicate with your smartphone.

Shaking up the industry
Print providers will be faced with new opportunities that are too good to miss, becoming one-stop-shops that provide everything from initial designs to finished products and analytics. While this may seem a bridge too far for some, new printing innovations will work with smarter software to make the market more accessible over time. AI-enabled design software will help designers and operators use these new technologies and Cloud-based software will help collect data, perform analytics, and close the loop on marketing communications and new IoT applications we can only dream about today.   

Lawrence Lee is Vice President, Incubation and Strategy, Xerox.

This column was published in the November 2018 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

The following are three distinct opportunities that Canadian businesses can leverage to harness the power of digital printing and stay ahead of the curve.

The cache of customization
Worldwide, major brands are looking for any edge they can find to capture consumer attention. Customized packaging has proven to be an effective means of captivating consumers in an already competitive and cluttered landscape. To appeal to consumers’ need for personalized experiences, Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ program brought Canadians millions of individually labeled bottles with their name on it. The program has since evolved beyond names to include words that reflect shared and seasonal experiences. Exclusive labels allowed the brand to rekindle consumer interest and target new customers resulting in increased sales for the first time in 10 years.

Custom packaging isn’t just for big brands. In fact, customized eye-catching packaging can not only help start-ups and SMBs punch above their weight class, but it is also an affordable option that can reduce waste. A microbrewery, for instance, no longer needs to print 50,000 bottle labels, with the possibility that thousands will go unused if sales don’t materialize. Instead, it can print exactly what it needs – even just 500 – without incurring additional cost.

3D printing walks the talk
Canadians are embracing a new form of printing altogether with 3D printing, a technology that’s gained huge momentum in the last few years and is now being incorporated into business initiatives and innovations. More importantly, 3D printing will enable the on-demand production of customized goods, effectively reinventing retail and manufacturing.
 
Custom, made-to-order products is one example of how 3D print technology can reinvent industries across the world. To further illustrate this point, it is estimated that 3D printing technology will expand at a 30-percent compound annual growth rate to an $18 billion industry by 2021. The potential is even bigger than most can even imagine given that this number is a tiny fraction of a $12 trillion manufacturing industry.

Transformative environments
Print is still very much part of our lives and this becomes obvious when we think of the ways that graphics printing is used. Often, these print experiences work in tandem with digital to create a full-sensory experience that includes the physical elements only print can provide.

Think about a visit to a shopping mall or a sporting event. Oversized banners, photo-quality posters and custom wallpaper immerse visitors in a branded experience influencing the customer journey and impacting purchase behaviour. Vehicles – from race cars to buses and trucks – wrapped with high-resolution images become mobile billboards. Unique candy bar wrappers support promotions and create games for purchasers, driving purchase decisions in a notoriously competitive market. Even children undergoing anxiety-producing procedures at hospitals and clinics can enjoy a space voyage when diagnostic and treatment rooms are transformed using print technology.

Print will continue to co-exist with online media, providing us with a full-sensory experience including the physical elements only print can provide, enhanced by the power of technology. The future of print is digital and businesses of all types and sizes should leverage print’s power to outmaneuver competition and remain one step ahead. Whether that’s customization of products, transforming environments or 3D printed goods, incorporating the latest print technology can help accelerate any business to the next level.

Mary Ann Yule is President of HP Canada.

That said, it’s not just a case of print versus digital — continuously changing consumer preferences and regulations make it difficult to enhance the customer experience and maintain satisfaction while determining the optimal communications strategy.

Across all industries, companies are facing increased pressure to lower print and mailing costs while addressing declining volumes, outdated equipment and upcoming lease renewals. As a result, many organizations are naturally turning to the digital platform as one way to offset these costs, but creating value – and revenue – by leveraging print communications could be a smarter, longer-term strategy.

It is important for companies to keep up with changing trends and stay ahead of business needs. Here are some ways organizations can succeed as they manage their print strategies and get the most out of essential communications as they “go digital.”

Data-driven targets
With enterprise-wide data initiatives, companies are opting to move away from mass mailings and their associated expense. With propensity modeling and analytics tools, companies can identify their most profitable, qualified prospects and target those mailings. We anticipate this trend will continue, as data-driven efficiencies are creating measurable ROI.

A personal presentation
Personalization plays an important role in purchasing decisions, as noted by 86 percent of survey respondents. With this in mind, many companies are adding personalized marketing offers on every component of the print package, from documents to envelopes.

As colour becomes more cost-effective and continuously important to the overall presentation, companies are also leveraging its power. An article by Colorcom notes that colour can improve readership by 40 percent, learning by 55 to 78 percent, and comprehension by as much as 73 percent.

Cutting costs through packaged deals
To cut through the clutter, a creative way to capture attention is to combine sealed envelopes in one larger mailing package going to the same address. This provides companies with a way to optimize mailings and reduce costs while offering customers one convenient delivery.

Creative packaging has also been added to the mix. For example, a new approach for proxy communications is to send investors a clear polywrap of their annual report to showcase the mailing contents and entice investors to vote their proxy.

Sticky messages will naturally stick
It is easy for repetitive messages to become noise to clients. Take “go digital” for example – this is on many envelopes and inserts we mail on behalf of our clients, but customers eventually tend to overlook it.

Regularly updating the message – in copy and design – helps keep the message fresh. One unique print technique that has proven to grow digital adoption is embedding a sticky note within the wall of an envelope via a die-cut section that remains smooth and secure, but can be easily removed and used as a sticky note. By doing so, one company saw its digital adoption rate more than double within the first two months of making this change.

Improved onboarding; improved outsourcing
Historically, the conversion effort created the biggest barrier for in-house print operations to outsource jobs. Now, with the introduction of advanced technologies that support faster onboarding, the heavy lifting is removed from the company’s IT resources. Onboarding time was reduced by 40 percent for one of our clients, making outsourcing increasingly attractive.

Even in today’s hyper-digital world, print remains an active and, for many industries, a vital customer touchpoint. As companies work to effectively manage print, it is increasingly important to understand the true costs and quality of communications, as well as the value they are creating for customers. In order to prepare for tomorrow’s next channel and new challenges, businesses need to stay ahead with innovative technologies that will help them prepare and capitalize on what’s ahead.  

Bob Kalenka is Chief Operations Officer at Broadridge Customer Communications, and Gary Abitz is Senior Vice President of Operations at Broadridge Customer Communications.

This column was originally published in the October 2018 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

Many packaging printers are still in the mindset that press speed and material and consumable costs are the determining factors of profit margins, however in short run printing a gear-change is required. The game now revolves around job changeovers.

For example, a small job of 1,000 feet printing at a speed of 200 feet-per-minute takes five minutes. The same job at a speed of 250 feet-per-minute takes just four. That’s a gain of one minute that can be used to print another job. However, if job changeovers take an hour or longer, that ‘one minute’ shrinks into insignificance.

Here we evaluate common printing technologies in the flexible packaging market, including gravure, flexo, offset and digital, and their particular strengths and weaknesses.

Gravure – long-run paradise
Gravure systems provide exquisite prints, and value-adding enhancements such as metallic effects can run inline at the same high speeds. As a result, gravure provides compelling benefits: cost per unit is low and quality is high. That is however, when printers are operating with long run lengths. Changeover times are lengthy with this process, and the cost of gravure print cylinders is high. So, whilst gravure is ideal for large jobs, for smaller jobs it is no longer time or cost efficient.

Flexo – lower cost, long run
Also delivering high speeds and reducing costs through economies of scale, flexo printing provides the additional benefit of cheaper plates than gravure. When printing lots of smaller jobs, printers can soon see savings in platemaking. However, as with gravure, changeovers are lengthy. Today, jobs are requiring more and more colour, and more colour results in even longer changeovers. The quality of flexo printing, even HD flexo, still hasn’t quite reached the heights of gravure. Flexo can offer some savings compared to gravure, but still sits more comfortably with long run lengths.

Digital – short-run marvel, but not without limitations
Digital technology has stolen the limelight in recent years. With no plate changes, and assignments set in advance, changeovers are virtually nonexistent making short run printing a perfect fit. The drawbacks however, are a lack of flexibility and options. Running at significantly lower speeds than other technologies, there’s no possibility of profit on medium to long jobs, plus many technologies use a ‘cost per click’ business model, making it difficult for printers to boost margins.

Primers must also be added to substrates adding cost and another process to the workload. There is also inconsistency on the number of substrates offered, the colour spectrum available, print quality, and ink migration, so printers are restricted in what they can offer. Digital is excellent for mock-ups and extremely short runs, but there are limitations on options, quality and profitability.

Offset – high quality for smaller print runs
Finally, how does web offset fit in the mix? Delivering excellent quality, with a typical resolution of 200 lines/inch (better than flexo), offset provides high quality printing. With no anilox roller a wider colour gamut is achievable, and designs of completely different colours can be printed right next to each other – ideal for printing multiple SKUs in one run. Offset plates are more economical than flexo and gravure plates, so short runs still make healthy margins. No solvents are used in the offset process bringing ink migration down to virtually zero, making it ideal for food, beverage and pharmaceutical packaging. Using less ink than other processes, usually a benefit in cost savings, provides an obstacle for offset in flexible packaging printing: solid whites and varnishes cannot be achieved.

Consequently, offset is often used in combination with flexo or gravure. Although adoption is still in its infancy, offset provides some persuasive arguments for use in short-run flexible packaging printing.
 
Erik Andriessen is Marketing Manager at Contiweb.

Print 18 Team: What do you see is the most critical issue in print and graphic communications?

Daniel Dejan: First of all, I think we live in a different business model today than we have in years past. In light of recent recessions in 2004 and 2008, we have shifted from a marketing-driven model to a finance-driven model. Consequently, one of the major challenges we have in the print industry is that finance people are making aesthetic and marketing decisions. This doesn’t mean we, as designers and marketers, throw up our hands. Rather, it means is that we have to understand that the way financial people make decisions is different than the way we do. We are motivated by the aesthetic and making sure something looks fabulous; they are motivated by ROI. Therefore, when we address budgets — projects that have to be approved and budgeted for — we have to learn how to address the decision makers in a language that they understand and help them see the vision and the true value of great design. Great design can do so many things: It can engage, educate, inform and motivate. Great design cuts through the noise and captures and engages someone’s attention. But often the cost of great design is excessive. We need to overcome that challenge and help the people in charge see the value of spending on quality specialty printing processes.

The second challenge is a much larger issue, currently, the United States ranks 28th in the world in reading comprehension. The larger concern is that it’s all well and good to print all these extraordinary pieces — direct mail, catalogues, magazines, etc. — but if no one is reading them and if we’re not incentivizing young people with the pleasure and delight of reading, then we are not reaching anyone. Just as the sporting goods industry or the fashion industry sponsor events to promote their products, the print industry needs to sponsor events that promote our product, which, fundamentally, is reading.

Print 18 Team: Truly fascinating and absolutely a much larger issue that needs to be addressed! How do you think digital has affected this even further, and where do you see print fitting into the digital world?

Daniel Dejan: Studies have shown that over the last 15 to 20 years we have split our minds so that the way we read ink on paper is extraordinarily different than the way we read on a device. When we turn on a device, whether it be a laptop, smart phone, etc., we go into skim mode; we don’t read with depth or take the time to extract the nuance, context and intent. We have taught ourselves to speed read. So, if I have a marketing message I’m trying to convey digitally, in many cases people aren’t getting it.

Still, print and digital do complement each other. At Sappi, we did a deep-dive market research project that produced a book, “Print and…”, and the bottom line is that print and digital together create a truly complete user experience. What we talk about is a shift in strategy. The reality is that the print community — particularly those in marketing and sales — have to change strategy to use print as a springboard for digital. We need to use print to engage people visually and through copy, get their attention and then get them to a digital vehicle for more information and action. Personally, I think augmented reality is the perfect way to do this, and now that the technology has evolved and is not as expensive, it is a great way to capture attention quickly.

Print 18 Team: What do you see are key print and graphic communications trends?  

Daniel Dejan: If we are looking at truly disruptive innovation, I’d say it’s variable data printing. Customized, personalized printing has extraordinary potential, and I don’t think we fully design for it yet. The idea that I can not only change the reader’s name, but that because I’ve done my homework, I can change anything piece by piece given all the demographic and psychographic information I have on my target audience, is phenomenal.

Print 18 Team: Can you expand on your Print 18 session topic – The Future of Paper and Print? Who should attend and what do you hope they take away from the session?

Daniel Dejan: Normally, I do presentations on something that is print-production based. This time, I’m doing a session that is more strategic in terms of marketing and sales, so I expect that at PRINT more marketing and sales people will attend. What I hope resonates the most is how important print is to getting an audience to read your message. If they truly read it, they will have greater comprehension and a greater likelihood to take action. With a well-designed, well-targeted, well-researched print piece, the reader’s valuation of the authorship increases, and they end up with an increased value in the company and in the brand.

This blog post was originally published on the Print 18/APTech website.

“The mantra at every board level needs to be ‘transform or be transformed,’” says Keven Peesker, President of Microsoft Canada, in an interview with Yvon Audette, Partner and National Leader, IT Advisory at KPMG in Canada. “To remain competitive and to evolve with the customer, organizations need to be thinking about how they can use data as a strategic asset and optimize their operations in new and innovative ways to better engage their customers.”

When it comes to business transformation, Big Data is one of the most significant disruptive advancements manufacturers can, and must, adopt. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the world. It estimates by 2020, 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet, and by 2025, the world will produce 163 zettabytes of data a year.

“The data is out there and many organizations are already sitting on decades of operational and customer data to begin with,” Peesker says. “Now, they need to invest in the tools and capabilities to organize that data and pull insights from it that will help businesses understand customer attitudes and behaviours.”

Innovative service models and emerging mobile technologies, Peesker says, are critical in helping business be more customer-focused and optimize their operations. “AI, in particular, will be critical in driving innovation. Through it, technology will become more intuitive, more conversational, and more intelligent, and enable businesses to better know and serve their customers in previously unimaginable ways.”

Disruptive technologies will enable organizations to develop and support new business models, advanced product innovation and holistic customer servitization.

The time to embrace digital disruption is now, according to KPMG’s 2018 Canadian CEO Outlook. The Outlook, released in June, finds Canadian CEOs are “overwhelmingly optimistic” about change, noting 96 percent of survey respondents say they view technological disruption as more of an opportunity than a threat. Comparatively, in the same survey last year, only 74 percent of CEOs were as positive about this disruption.

“There is a reason CEOs want to talk to us about predictive analytics; it’s because they know it is the key to vastly improved decision-making,” writes Shreeshant Dabir, National Lead, Lighthouse KPMG in Canada, and Carl Barrelet, Lighthouse KPMG in Canada.

Describing it as a continuously evolving field, Dabir and Barrelet say analytics help organizations better understand their operations, clientele and market by identifying trends while interpreting the performance of products/services and market position. “Successful businesses are those that leverage and push the boundaries of analytics to attain reliable, predictive insights, unleashing opportunities for operational performance, risk management, and improved customer experience.”

They suggest several ways Canadian CEOs can enhance their data analytics capabilities and improve decision-making. First, organizations must understand what predictive analytics can do. Spend time talking to advisors, startups, incubators and service providers about what they see in the market, they advise, so businesses can assess how and where predictive analytics can improve the business value.

Developing a roadmap that is practical and strategic for digitization is key to embedding analytics into the company culture, Dabir and Barrelet note. In order to make analytics an essential tool, businesses must remove data siloes and scale up analytics successes. They recommend moving the predictive analytics team “down the hall from the executive suite” to provide immediate access to insights while encouraging employees to integrate analytics into their work processes.

As well, organizations should focus on “small yet reliable” data sets. “Instead of spending all your time and resources on gathering as much data as possible, start exploring what data could be telling you and then focus your efforts on finding and curating the right data to support deeper insights,” Dabir and Barrelet write. “The need for good data is much greater now than ever before and your organization needs to have a robust enterprise data strategy in order to deploy intelligent automation at scale.”

Technological advancements will continue to reshape today’s workplaces, allowing organizations to drive operating efficiency and create new, innovative solutions rather than pursue traditional ways of doing business. Dabir and Barrelet estimate within the next three years, all corporate decision-making will be influenced – in some way or another – by predictive analytics.

This editorial was originally published in the July/August 2018 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

Several years ago, a new frontier called in-mold electronics (or IME) started to emerge. This frontier, as reported in the IDTechEx Research report Conductive Ink Markets 2018-2028: Forecasts, Technologies, Players is once again becoming commercial.
 
IME is not a product but is a process. Here, functional and graphical printing are carried out on a 2D flat substrate which is then formed and moulded into a 3D shaped. As such, it provides a way to structurally integrate the electronics into 3D shaped objects whilst using high-throughput production processes suited to volume applications. This approach enables novel, elegant, and space-saving designs.

The schematic below shows the commercial progression of IMEs. It started being developed from 2007/8 onwards. The first successful product was launched in a Ford car in 2012. Here, using IME, the overhead console had been made thin and light. This, at time, was considered a major commercial coup for printed electronics.

However, the product was soon recalled. We understood that the overhead console gave false read-outs. The origin of the error, at the time, was attributed to the streamlining steps that were taken during the pilot to mass production transition. This failure put the industry back and caused uses to be extra cautious.

The interest,however, did not die. As shown below, many prototypes were developed. These include prototypes for use in consumer electronics, whitegoods/home appliances and automotive applications. Our visits to end user sites confirmed that there were active engagements behind the scene. In this time, the technology also become more known. Many material suppliers appeared, pushing the technology and seeding the market. The IME houses also became more active, helping users do prototypes and pilot studies.

Products made with IME (and conductive inks) are once again on the market. An example is shown below. This is a wearable device with structurally integrated metallization. This, we believe, is just the first step. Indeed, soon, we expect to see bigger announcements in industries such as in the automotive. The market, therefore, has overcome its past failure and turned a page.

^{Sources: Photographs taken by IDTechEx.Events in brackets indicate where the photographs were taken. T-Ink,Tactotek (Printed Electronics Europe 2016), DuPont (Wearable Expo Japan 2017), DuPont (IDTechEx Show! 2017), Sintex-NP (IDTechEx Show Berlin 2018); Holst Centre (Printed Electronics Show 2018).}
 
IME is made possible thanks to the adaptability of conductive ink technology. Here, the formulations and filler compositions must be adjusted to withstand a major one-off elongation event during the forming (during the transition from a flat sheet to a 3D shape); and to survive the thermoforming and moulding conditions.

The interest on the part of ink suppliers has dramatically increased over the past few years. This is in line with the interest in stretchable conductive inks. Indeed, as shown below, today many paste makers have either already launched a product or have demonstrated the capability to serve the market.

The competition therefore is intensifying and as such we expect that premium pricing will not hold over the long run. This is however not to say that there is no room for differentiation on service or performance. In terms of the service, the ability to work with customers closely and customize solutions – or tweak solutions – for specific use cases is highly valued. This is because established figures of merit do not yet exist to enable offering commodity-like standardized products. In terms of performance, not all the inks are the same. Some users tell us that, for example, some pastes are superior in terms of handling sharp bends whilst some offer better adhesion.

Furthermore, as is the case with stretchable conductive inks, suppliers must now take a total solution approach. As such, they are now offering a full portfolio of IME compatible materials (and not just conducive inks). This is an asset because the supplier becomes a one-stop-shop, because it eases the development burden on the user, and because it allows the suppliers to aggressively price elements of the portfolio where competition is rife whilst making higher margins in other parts.

^{Sources: Photographs taken by IDTechEx. Events in brackets indicate where the photographs were taken. Japan Nanotech (2016); IDTechEx Showa USA 2015; C-Touch Taiwan (2016); FineTech Japan 2016); IDTechEs Show! USA 2016; IDTechEx Show! Europe 2018.}

Dr. Khasha Ghaffarzadeh is Research Director at IDTechEx.

Within a span of 12 short months, UK-based Serif Software has turned the Mac graphics software market on its ear! Its first salvo – Affinity Designer – was released in October 2014 (reviewed in PrintAction February 2015) and cut a broad swath into the design, pre-media and prepress software market with powerful and useful features aimed squarely at graphic arts professionals. And instead of exacting a monthly toll from its users, Serif chose to sell perpetual licenses of Affinity Designer through Apple’s online store for a fraction the cost of competing applications.

Now Serif is poised to disrupt the image-editing and photography market with its next product for graphics professionals and amateurs alike – Affinity Photo. As with Designer, Serif has engineered Affinity Photo as a Mac application from the first line of code instead of porting their popular PhotoPlus application from the Windows side of its business. And based on my initial impressions and early industry buzz, Affinity Photo is a strong sophomore effort for the company as it courts the Mac design, photo and graphics pro.

Personas for the people
When first launching Affinity Photo (AP) the default user interface opens in an application window and presents a familiar looking array of image-editing tools and panels that are relatively easy to navigate for both experienced image pros and amateurs. As with Designer, Affinity Photo groups tools and functions into task specific workspaces called Personas – good for those keen to organize their workflow. Initially, Photo opens with the Photo Persona active, presenting a familiar looking Tool Dock on the left chock full of the usual (image-editing) suspects including: Move Tool; Selection Brush; Cropping; various paint brush and fill tools; dodging and cloning tools; as well as a few mystery tools.

Mystery tool #1: The AP Flood Select tool enables users to select pixels by colour similarity. As you drag the tool across a range of pixels, the selection size grows to encompass a wider range of colour. Flood Select is especially useful in isolating shadow areas in high contrast images. Mystery tool #2 is the Inpainting Brush, another tool unique to AP that can be used to identify damaged areas within an image, and then used to paint over the missing data with new pixels reconstructed based on image information from the surrounding pixels. It sounds complex, but is really just a new and innovative approach to content-aware restoration.

The toolbar running horizontally along top of the Photo Persona application window houses auto levels, contrast, colour and white balance buttons in addition to selection and quick mask tools. In particular, AP’s Quick Mask feature enables users to easily build masks to isolate key elements within their images, then toggle how the selection is displayed. Other toolbar inhabitants include a nifty Force Pixel Alignment tool that will snap vector objects or pixel selections to full pixels – very useful for Web graphics – as well as a full range of arrange, insert and alignment functions.

A full range of filters can be found in the Photo Persona menubar, including the varied flavours of Blur; Sharpen; Distort; Noise; Edge Detection; Shadows/Highlights and so on. When launched each Filter pops up in its own window with all the appropriate controls and parameters for the user to adjust. Split Screen, a feature borrowed from Designer, is built into the filter window and enables users to view images in full screen, split screen or mirrored screen to preview the effect alongside the original image in real-time.

As you might expect, the right side of the default AP workspace contains a familiar set of panels relevant to the Persona that the user is working in. For example, the Photo Persona includes essential panels such as Layers; Effects; Swatches; Brushes; Histogram; Navigator; and so on. All panels can be rearranged to suit individual preferences within the application window to create a customized workspace. The chaotically minded can opt to do away with the window altogether by choosing to work in Separated Mode, which breaks all the aforementioned toolbars and panels into free-floating elements that can be placed anywhere on your screen.

Using Layers, AP provides a comprehensive non-destructive editing workflow allowing users to apply any adjustment or effect to underlying Layers. Colour images can be converted to greyscale using a B+W adjustment layer similar to a channel mixer you might find in other photo-editing applications. Unique to Affinity Photo, Live Filter Layers can be applied to any layer and modified in real-time.

Portrait photographers and prepress techs dealing with a lot of headshots will appreciate AP’s Frequency Separation filter which enables users to correct texture and colour independently – great for blemish removal and smoothing coarse skin textures without affecting skin tone.

Liquify & Develop
Affinity Photo includes three additional Personas for users: Liquify; Develop; and Export. As the name implies, Liquify Persona is the workspace for distorting pixels in images. When switching to the Liquify workspace, a grid is immediately applied to your image showing brush size and distortion effect. The Toolbar displays a selection of distortion tools, such as Twirl; Pinch; Liquify Turbulence Tool; as well as a Freeze Tool that creates a mask to protect an area in your image from distortion, and a Thaw Tool to remove it.

Opening a Camera RAW file in Affinity Photo automatically defaults to the Develop Persona – AP’s robust RAW editing workspace. In addition to RAW, the Develop Persona works with other standard image formats and Photo’s tabbed UI means that users can work with RAW images alongside other files. Develop enables users to apply multiple adjustments to images encompassing exposure; white balance; and black point along with a variety of other professional-grade adjustments. The AP Scope panel shows users the distribution of chrominance and luminance within their image – a capability I have not previously seen in an image-editing application.

I was particularly impressed with the powerful lens correction features in the AP Develop Persona, including notable noise reduction for high ISO images. That said: Affinity Photo has the ability to create and save presets for rectifying lens distortion, but this version does not appear to include profiles for specific lenses. Hopefully, some popular lens profiles will show up in a future version. When finished perfecting your RAW image, Affinity Photo prompts you to ‘Develop’ before changing Personas in a nod to the analog roots of darkroom wizardry.

The Export Persona affords users very precise control over getting an image out of Affinity Photo in a variety of formats. At this point, I should mention that AP has its own propriety file structure for saving files you are actively working with. The .afphoto file type contains all layer, filter, mask and effect information in addition to the pixels in your image. Although this format is both efficient and convenient, users will still need to export more common image formats for prepress use. Fortunately, the Export Persona makes short work of this task with all the options necessary to export SVG, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, EPS and PDF available in one convenient workspace. Interestingly, I saved the same test image in Photoshop and Affinity Photo –  the Affinity Photo file was about 70 percent smaller while maintaining the same pixel density.

Under the hood
It is easy to get wrapped up in all the bells and whistles Affinity Photo provides for image-editing pros and overlook a few other pretty remarkable attributes. Under the hood, AP uses a 64-bit architecture and harnesses every graphics advantage the Mac ecosystem has to offer, such as: Support for Open GL; Grand Central Dispatch; Core Graphics; and the Retina display UI. In plain English this translates to fast, live processing and instantaneous previews of a huge range of high-end filters and effects; masking effects and advanced adjustment layers as well as live blending modes. Affinity Photo is very fast, even on modestly configured equipment such as my aging 2012 Macbook Air.

Prepress pros will be glad to hear that in addition to support for RGB, Greyscale and LAB colour spaces (both 8- and 16-bit), AP provides users with a start-to-finish CMYK workflow, something of a rarity in image-editing applications within this price range. Add to that a multi-document tabbed interface, support for unlimited layers and impressive live preview performance even when applying effects to massive layered images and its pretty tough to see a downside to working in Affinity Photo!

That’s not to suggest Affinity Photo provides everything a photographer, designer or prepress pro wants or needs. A few useful production capabilities are missing in action with this version, including support for scripts, HDR image compositing and panorama stitching. Also, minor conveniences such as the application recognizing the pixel dimensions of an image in the clipboard when creating a new file have been overlooked – in this version at least. The good in Affinity Photo’s imperfections is that Serif has fodder for future updates – something they have established a good reputation for with Affinity Designer.

Elephant in the prepress department
“Gee, Affinity Photo sounds an awful lot like Photoshop! How does it compare?” Google “Affinity Photo” and you will see “Photoshop Alternative” or “Photoshop Challenger” as the headline or opening stanza in dozens of articles. When assessing Affinity Photo, I tried to put more than two decades of Photoshop experience on the back burner and take an unbiased look at this new application instead comparing the two programs feature-by-feature. As a result, I have concluded that Affinity Photo is the first image-editing application I’ve worked with that can meet the day-to-day production needs of most designers, photographers and image-editing specialists that didn’t have an Adobe logo on its welcome screen. This application provides all tools needed to work with CMYK images with full Photoshop import (.PSD and .PSB) and export capability (.PSD) while maintaining layers and effects.

Does Affinity Photo do everything Photoshop does? Of course not! Photoshop benefits from more than 25 years of development and includes arcane features such ad-hoc video editing and 3D model rendering and printing – neither which might be relevant to many designers, premedia and prepress specialists.

And if, like myself, you have been working with Photoshop on a professional level for more than 20 years you have also likely memorized plenty of key commands and know where to access every single function with a flick of the wrist. With that level of muscle memory dedicated to working in Photoshop, you will have some re-learning to do before becoming as effective in Affinity Photo. The key takeaway here is that in most cases you can eventually be as effective once you are on the downhill side of the Affinity Photo learning curve… a pretty big accomplishment for Serif’s new kid on the image-editing block.

Zac Bolan can be reached at zbolan@mac.com

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a relatively long, highly important technical article produced from original research by Ryerson University’s Dr. Martin Habekost and Dr. Abhay Sharma, with contributions from fourth-year student Alyssa Andino. If preferred, a PDF version of the article is available for printing in PrintAction‘s archives.)

There are some exciting new developments in the world of measuring instruments that tackle the perennial issues of measuring wet and dry press sheets, measurement of papers with optical brighteners, doing a press check with metallic inks or trying to match a press sheet to a proof – new standards and new instruments are now available that eradicate many of these practical colour issues. The Barbieri SpectroPad2, the Techkon SpectroDens and the X-Rite eXact have been tested and evaluated in Ryerson University’s pressroom in different applications from inkjet photo papers to metallic PANTONE inks on press.

Spectrophotometers are routinely used for colour measurement and colour management in many commercial printing and proofing workflows. In the case of media containing optical brightening agents, UV-induced fluorescence has lead to poor levels of agreement between models from different manufacturers, or different models from the same manufacturer. If instruments produce different readings, then problems with colour matching can occur when colour management is done in prepress with one instrument, but a different instrument is used to do spot checks at press-side.

A major contributor to inter-model differences is the amount of ultraviolet (UV) energy in the instrument. When a paper contains brightening agents, instruments have reported different measurements for the same sample. The new standard ISO 13655 now clearly defines four measurement modes: M0, M1, M2 and M3. In broad terms, M0 is a legacy mode for all devices prior to the implementation of the new measurement modes, while M1 and M2 are UV-included and UV-excluded modes, respectively. The M3 mode is a polarizing mode for use in ink dry-back on press or for measuring metallic inks and other special effect inks.

New ISO 13655 measurement
The problem to date has been that there was no clear specification for handheld spectrophotometers for prepress and pressroom use. The new ISO 13655 standard provides much more clarity for the instrument measuring conditions, which has brought instruments from different suppliers into closer agreement. The instruments evaluated here are new instruments that meet this standard. We provide an explanation for ISO 13655 and its implementation for the general user.

The legacy mode M0 represents the majority of measuring instruments used in the field today. The X-Rite 530, i1Pro and iSis are all M0 instruments. M0 is directed to instruments that use a tungsten lamp to illuminate the specimen being measured. The tungsten bulb based device used to be the primary type of device on the market. It should be noted that the UV component can be very weak in these instruments as they have very low energy in the 300-400 nm range.

An M0 instrument can safely be used for process control applications where it is adequate to make repeatable measurements, it can be used in situations where it is not necessary to know the “absolute” measurement value and there is no exchange of information or correlation with other measurement scenarios. In general, the M0 mode exists as a catch-all mode so that we have within the new ISO standard a category for legacy devices. The M0 mode enables older devices to have a place within the new standard.

M1 is known as the “D50 mode” or “UV included mode”  – devices can use two different methods to achieve this mode. The light source in the instrument must create the effect of CIE Illuminant, D50. A major difference (and improvement) over earlier specifications is that in this mode the spectral power distribution of the illuminant should approximate D50, thus the relative amount  of UV and visible wavelengths is now clearly and unambiguously specified.

The clarification for spectral power distribution in measuring instruments, ISO 13655, is accompanied by a similar clarification in the standard for viewing booths ISO 3664. Via updated standard ISO 3664, emphasis has turned to requiring a closer simulation of Illuminant D50 thus clarifying the amount of UV illumination in the viewing booth. In the current context, ISO 3664 has called for tighter tolerances on the quality of the light source to ensure that it closely matches the D50 (M1) curve especially in the UV part of the spectrum.

We may say that M1 is, in fact, nothing more than an ISO 3664 source in the instrument. By implementation of these two ISO standards, we arrive for the first time at a situation where instrument reported values are in agreement with what is observed visually in a viewing booth. D50, one of the standard viewing booth modes, is the basis for the Profile Connection Space in the ICC architecture. M1 mode within instruments corresponds to ISO 3664 for viewing booths, all of which make M1 the most desirable mode for today’s colour measurement and colour management systems. Instruments that offer M1 mode are devices such as X-Rite’s i1Pro2 and iSis2 – note the “2” in the model name, indicating they are second generation instruments for the new ISO standard.

M2, defined as a “UV-cut” mode, removes all UV light from the measurement system, below 400 nm. ISO 13655 states, “The spectral power distribution of the measurement source… shall only contain substantial radiation power in the wavelength range above 400 nm…” M2 is thus a UV-cut mode, filtering out any UV component below 400 nm, in the instrument’s light source. How is this mode used in practice? There will be times when a customer will request a print to be measured using M2 because the lighting used to display the job is expected to be free of UV content. A museum is an example of one such place that may use UV-free lighting. In colour management circles there may be instances that require removing UV light from the measurement system. With the new standard there is a specific definition for “UV-cut” and the wavelength at which it occurs.

M3 is a polarizing mode (for measurement of wet offset press sheets) and consists of UV-cut, up until 400 nm and then a polarizing filter is applied to the remaining wavelengths. The main use of M3 is to limit or completely remove surface reflections. In the offset printing sector, the customer pays for the final dry product. One of the main concerns is that the press sheets come off the press wet and as they dry the density of the ink drops. The M3 mode can aid printers in cutting the surface gloss from wet inks, and if drying is primarily represented by a change in surface gloss, then by removing the gloss, we may have a better prediction of the final expected dry density. It is generally agreed that a polarization filter can give less difference in density readings between a wet and a dried-back press sheet, so the use of a polarizing filter can provide a better predictor of dry density from wet density readings.

There is considerable debate around the use of polarization filters for density measurements and for use in metallic inks. The use of polarization filters is somewhat controversial since the effect is not controllable and each situation will produce different results, until now there have been no published standards for the use of polarization filters. The situation was akin to the use of UV light in the instrument, it was not stipulated or clearly defined. ISO 13655 now clarifies the situation for the response of the polarizing filter. The M3 mode is examined in the present study for use in measurement of metallic inks – an area that has been a thorny issue for measurement and control of metallic inks on press. Practical testing using the Techkon SpectroDens and X-Rite eXact show that the M3 mode provides huge improvements when controlling metallic inks on press.

Barbieri SpectroPad2
New in the market today, from different companies, are instruments that meet the ISO 13655 standard. The Barbieri SpectroPad2 spectrophotometer was evaluated at Ryerson GCM for use in photo papers containing high amounts of optical brighteners. The SpectroPad2 has a novel upright design with a large, clear panel. To measure, the head moves along for a small distance until a small beep reports the measurement in the touch-screen LCD panel. The device connects directly to a laptop or other computer via Barbieri Gateway software using USB or WiFi, or at press-side the LCD panel can be set to immediately report a pass or fail colour test.

Importantly, the SpectroPad2 is compliant with the M0, M1 and M2 measurement modes – it is highly recommended that a press shop should only buy a device that complies with these standards. The white calibration tile is neatly hidden and is unlocked when white calibration is done by the user. The device is clean, simple, elegant and a charm to use, and has applications in offset printing as well as all digital applications such as large-format inkjet. Barbieri is an Italian company, run by brothers Stefan and Markus Barbieri, supplying a range of spectrophotometers with a wide European user base, and support here in Toronto.

Techkon SpectroDens
The Techkon SpectroDens is a sophisticated German instrument in which we focused on the use of the M3 measurement mode. The SpectroDens also has a neatly hidden calibration tile in the charging base for the instrument. The SpectroDens can also be used to see if a press sheet is in compliance with the G7 process. The latest model even offers a hand-scanning mode for the measurement of the G7 target.

In the current evaluation we focused on the M3 mode, which can be used for measuring metallic inks and other special effect inks. The M3 measurement mode describes the use of two polarizing filters before the reflected light from the sample hits the sensor.

In the test, we measured wet and dry metallic inks to see how well the new M3 measurement mode works when it comes to measuring such inks. Ten metallic inks with PANTONE P877 silver or P874 gold as base metallic ink were printed on a Prüfbau printability tester and measured. The reference point was the printed metallic ink in the PANTONE metallic book. A range of samples with declining ink amounts were printed. The Techkon SpectroDens was used to measure L*a*b* values and the density of the samples.

The colour data and the density were recorded using the SpectroDrive software from Techkon, which can be downloaded for free. The software can connect to the instrument over WiFi, if both devices are on the same wireless network. The other option is to connect the instrument with the supplied USB cable to a USB port of your computer. With help of the software a colour standard can be set and then measurements can be taken of the samples and compared to the standard. The colour difference between standard and sample can be calculated in various colour differencing equations. For the evaluation of the M3 measurement mode, we used the DE2000 equation because the calculated DE2000 values correspond quite well with how we, as human observers, perceive colour differences.

Since the SpectroDens, and all other modern spectrophotometers measure the light spectrum that is reflected back from the sample, they do not calculate density in the same way as traditional filter-based densitometers. In spectral-based densitometers, the reflected light spectrum is used from which to calculate density. This is the reason why the measuring device is capable of giving L*a*b* values and printed ink density at the same time.

Press run with silver and gold metallic inks
After printing 10 different metallic inks on the Prüfbau printability tester, six colours were chosen for a pressrun on our 2-colour Heidelberg Quickmaster QM46. Again, we used the printed ink density from the PANTONE metallic book as a yardstick. After a proper set up and achieving the target ink density, we turned the ink ductor off and ran 200 consecutive prints. For the analysis, a press sheet was measured every 10 sheets and the results collected with the SpectroDrive software and recorded in Excel. The results from the prints on the Prüfbau printability tester and the QM46 press run aligned quite well in regards to which metric can be used for controlling metallic inks on press.

For the metallic ink project we also used an X-Rite eXact which has been switched into M3 measurement mode. The same samples (Prüfbau and QM46) that were measured with the SpectroDens were also measured with the eXact. X-Rite offers the DataCatcher software which can connect via Bluetooth or USB-cable with instrument. The data can also be stored directly into an Excel spreadsheet.

Very important and relevant findings show that the M3 mode can be used to measure spectral density and the density relates well to ink film thickness of metallic ink. When we increase or decrease the amount of metallic ink, the density reading increases or decreases accordingly, thus we have an instrument and metric to control metallic ink on press. The other critical result here is that two different instruments – the Techkon SpectroDens and the X-Rite eXact agree in their measurements of the same sample. A main result from this project is that there is close agreement in terms of density between the Techkon SpectroDens and the X-Rite eXact for the metallic colours. The density function on both measurement devices allows to easily track the printed ink density on press. Differences start to show up when thick ink films are being printed, when one tries to print a real intense or dense colour. At this point, the measurement values start to drift, but you have to keep in mind that at a heavy ink film and high ink densities very little light reaches the light sensor and, therefore, the calculated L*a*b* values and ink densities can start to be slightly different.

Another option would be to track the L*-value of the printed ink. L* is a lightness measurement. So, if the L* value is below the target L*-value than the ink is too dark and too much ink is applied on press. If the L* value is above the target value then the ink is too light and a little bit more ink has to be printed.

Our results clearly show that the recorded density values decrease as the printed ink film thickness decrease. A decreasing ink film thickness means that the print gets lighter, which in return, in shown in the increasing L*-values. A higher L*-value means, that the colour is less intense than the desired colour and a thicker ink film has to be printed on press by either opening the ink keys more, or by increasing the ink dwell in the ink fountain.

More than hype
In many print shops there are different devices used in prepress and press, or a printer may have a Toronto and Ottawa location with an instrument in each facility. The new ISO 13655 standard brings all these different instruments into close alignment. Further, the ISO 13655 enables different measurement modes for UV-included and UV-excluded measurements and also the M3 mode for measurement of metallic inks. Together these changes provide huge advantages to practical colour measurement and colour matching at press-side.

It is not marketing hype, press shops should genuinely seek to upgrade their instrumentation and in this work we evaluated the Barbieri SpectroPad2, Techkon SpectroDens and X-Rite eXact – these all meet the new ISO standards and are all easy to use, software-driven devices. Specifically in this testing, the Techkon SpectroDens and the X-Rite eXact can both be used to measure metallic inks on press, using the M3 measurement mode. A relatively easy to understand metric for on press control is the printed ink density that both instruments can show in their LCD displays. Using the printed ink density allows press operators to measure and control metallic inks like they are controlling four process colours!

The first keynote came from Chris Travis of KBA North America. He talked about many advances still being made in press technology, with more sales of complex machines, combining different   printing features and more automation. Presses are being ordered with double coaters for spot UV, spot matte and special effect coatings. Sometimes the coating units are before the printing units for laying white down first, to print on foils and for the application of sizing. The goal of all these various press configurations is to get everything done in  one pass.

Travis also points out that the decision to print a job digitally or offset starts at a relatively low good-copy count. He says any job with more than 191 good print copies is more cost effective when the job is printed offset. UV technology is also changing, as the light tubes change from the standard mercury vapour to iron-doped mercury vapour light tubes. This little change results in higher gloss levels for UV coatings. The coating manufacturers have to adjust the phot0-initiator mix so it will work with the iron-doped UV light tubes and UV LED technology is gaining more of a foothold in the print industry. Travis also points out that flexographic printing is growing and holds the most potential in the print industry. The industry overall is finally growing again even as a lot of mergers and acquisitions take place.

The second keynote was given by Patrick Younk from Los Alamos National Lab, introducing conference attendees to some of their incredible work. Many fundamental research projects are carried out by this research institute. Younk talked about the High Altitude Water Cherenkov observatory for the detection of gamma rays originating from the sun. He also talked about an ultra-fast optical ranging measurement system. It is a non-contact position measurement system that works with a 1-micron accuracy and it could be used to measure ink film thickness or colour registration.

Michael Van Haren from Quad/Graphics presented the third keynote on omni-channel marketing. He began by describing the differences between multi-channel and omni-channel marketing. Omni-channel marketing is the same message on all media. Print of course is still the main driver of this. Why – because it works. It delivers the right message in the right place at the  right time.

With the emergence of high-speed inkjet printing it is possible to personalize the message and with full colour inkjet the message to the consumer becomes very personalized. A highly targeted variable data print uses personalized URLs or PURLs. Through QR codes and image recognition apps, the printed piece has some augmented reality to it. For all this technology to work well, data is needed to drive the campaign. The contact strategy needs to be build with print being in sync with digital channels. Any digital tools that interact with the customer need to be tested over and over again to make sure they all work as intended.

The fourth keynote was given by Bruce Khan from Clemson University and his topic was printed electronics. He said that print is and will be the manufacturing method of choice in this area, because it is fast and produces the electronic components at a relatively low cost. Khan also says that false hopes had been given by nanotechnology and RFID technology. The most successful printed electronic component is the glucose sensor strip for diabetics. Many obstacles still need to be overcome to successfully print something like flexible hybrid electronics.

Colour and optical brighteners
On the second day of the TAGA conference, the series of presentations started with a diverse range of topics. John Anderson from Kodak talked about the  Flexcel NX flexographic printing plate that allows the manufacturing of plates with flat top dots. The Flexcel NX plate is coupled with DigiCapNX technology to achieve higher solid ink densities than with conventional plate technology. This technology allows for creating halftones from a 0.4 to a 99.6 percent tint. Through Hyperflex NX technology, the floor of the flexographic printing plate gets extended to support low tint value halftone dots. This presentation was an example of the advances that are currently made in flexography that allow the printing of finer details and more vibrant solids.

Don Schroeder from Fujifilm was one of the first speakers to talk about the influence of optical brighteners in papers and that proofing papers have no or very little optical brighteners in them. This discrepancy causes colour differences between press sheet and proof, especially if the paper has a very blueish white colour. The new measurement conditions M1 as outlined in ISO 13655 requires a light source with UV component, so the optical brighteners in the paper get excited and influence the measurement of the printed colours. The standard datasets that many colour management solutions are built upon were created in 2006 and they have been measured under the M0 measurement conditions, which are without a UV component in the light source. The new dataset created in 2013 use measurements taken under the M1 conditions.

Many other presenters talked about the new M1 measurement conditions and how they will influence the printing industry, but there is a drawback to this new measurement condition. An extreme example is that two M1 compliant light sources can have 50 and 150 percent of UV component in them and this results in a b* difference of 7. This can be quite significant for the overall colour difference and can result in a pass or fail of a colour. In conjunction with ISO 13655, for the measurement conditions of light booths, ISO 3664 has also been updated, so that the light source in the viewing booths also has a UV component in them. The compliance of a viewing booth with this updated ISO standard can be verified with a measurement device from GL Optics. Overall there were six presentations about the new M1 measurement condition and how it influences measured colours, the proofing stage and also the colour management part of any print job.

Although the DE2000 colour difference equation is not (yet) part of an ISO standard, work is being done to develop a colour space that is based on DE2000. John Seymour from QuadTech presented his advances in this project. His goal is to create a colour space with modified L*a*b*-axis that allow for the use the DeltaLab colour difference formula.

A presentation was given on the strategies of managing spot colours using traditional metrics and how to predict the colour outcome using simulated colours on screen. Research is also being done regarding working with expanded gamut printing using 7 colours (CMYK plus orange, green and violet). The use GCR and optimized colour sequence (KOVCGMY) are instrumental to more stable and predictable print results.

Raia Slivniak-Zorin from HP in Israel talked about the work she and her team did with regard to digitally printed flexible packaging. The work was done on an HP Indigo and the prints were also laminated. One of her main findings is that a primer needs to applied to the flexible substrate first, so the ElectroInk will adhere properly. Also an adhesive has to be applied first, before the printed material can be laminated. A corona treatment of the substrate greatly enhances the bonding of primer and ink.

The 2015 TAGA conference was a very high profile conference with many cutting-edge research  presentations that will have an  influence on the print industry in the coming years. The fact that the M1 measurement condition  received so much attention during the conference shows that the new ISO standard requires more  investigation.

Simple demographics are one of the biggest threats to the viability of print. Younger generations consume more and more media with little need for the printed page. Digital display companies are keenly focused on the functionality of their user interfaces, but readability remains an allusive metric for most.

From consumer reports it seems the tablet reading experience on devices such as Apple’s iPad or Samsung’s Galaxy leaves something to be desired. The tablet’s glossy backlit LCD screen is great for watching videos, but reflections tire the reader’s eye and the words are difficult to read outdoors. Emissive displays also draw a lot of power causing tablet batteries to fade after only a few hours in many cases.

On the other hand many avid e-book fans will tell you that a Kindle or Kobo with crisp black type on a paper-white background provides a much better reading experience. Though by no means a replacement for the multi-media friendly tablet, former consumers of the printed page have been increasingly adopting this style of e-reader for ease of reading both indoors and out while enjoying longer battery life. But what makes these e-readers so different from tablets?

The answer is E Ink
E Ink takes its name from its technology – electrophoretic ink – and is the visible component used in Electronic Paper Displays (EPDs). This promising technology began life in 1996 as a research project in the MIT Media Lab before becoming the foundation of E Ink Corporation, which sought to commercialize the digital paper concept as the preferred display for e-readers.

E Ink is made of microcapsules about the diameter of a human hair sandwiched between two thin layers of film containing a transparent top electrode, and a bottom electrode. Each microcapsule contains negatively charged black pigment and positively charged white pigment suspended in a clear fluid. When the top electrode charges positive, the black pigment rises to the surface, morphing the microcapsule from white to black. The microcapsules are bi-stable and reflective – meaning the image will remain on the digital page without electricity and requires only ambient light to be visible. That’s why E Ink displays draw very little power.

E Ink displays are well suited for viewing static images that change sporadically – simulating book, newspaper or magazine pages for example. Because the display reflects natural light, it much more closely resembles the printed page with readability improving as the light gets brighter – working especially well in full sunlight. E Ink Corporation announced new concepts at CES 2015 and demonstrated E Ink products developed by licensees that evolve the digital paper paradigm beyond the e-reader.

New E Ink models
“One of the more interesting products we are showing at CES is the Sony DPT S1 business e-reader,” reveals Giovanni Mancini, head of global marketing for E Ink. “Designed for the business user, this device is the size of an A4 sheet of paper, extremely rugged and weighs only about six ounces.

“The DPT S1 has touch capability, but it also has an extremely responsive digitizer. This is intended for business users who want to take a large number of documents with them, but don’t want the bulk of the paper,” he continues. “Users can annotate documents with their fingertip while in the field, then have the information captured into the document control system back in the office.”

The Sony DPT S1 comes with 4gb storage, capable of carrying thousands of monochrome pages and has a micro SD slot for expansion.

Mancini then demonstrates another innovative use for E Ink in the form of a mobile phone display. The Russian-made YotaPhone is an Android mobile phone featuring a standard high-resolution colour display on the front, and a monochrome E Ink display on the back of the handset.

“The idea is to attach different information feeds, such as email or text messages, that you want to keep monitoring to the E Ink display on the back,” Mancini explains. “This way you don’t have to constantly turn on the screen on the front of your phone and cycle through the various apps to get the information. This really extends the battery life of the YotaPhone because of the very low power consumption of E Ink displays.

“To really conserve power, the user can completely disable the front colour display and get the full Android interface on the E Ink display. You can even use the Kindle App to read books on the back of the YotaPhone!

“Another innovative use of an E ink display can be seen on the Sony Smartband Talk – a sports watch and fitness device that pairs up with an Android phone. The Smartband Talk enables you to track your fitness during the day and get information from your smartphone, all displayed on a controllable E Ink display,” explains Mancini.

While EPDs are already well established in the retail display category, E Ink Corporation announced and demonstrated innovative new solutions at CES 2015 targeting both the indoor and outdoor signage markets.

“These E Ink 32-inch digital displays are great for small businesses such as coffee shops or restaurants, for example, that might want to use them as menu boards,” says Mancini. “They are also well-suited for information displays in public spaces such as bus shelters. Because of low energy requirements, batteries or even solar power can power these E Ink displays without the need to run cables.

“Another thing that we announced at CES this year is our E ink Prism product,” Mancini continues. “We’ve taken our E ink technology and encapsulated many different colours of pigments within the same microsphere and laminated them into a colour changing film to incorporate into architectural products.”

E Ink Corporation demonstrated a 20-foot wall of colour-shifting Prism tiles at CES. Controlled by a PC, these tiles are designed to change colours, providing a different aesthetic and changing the mood of a hotel lobby or an airport terminal.

“Right now this is a concept product for us,” Mancini continues, “created through collaboration with architects and design firms over the past year. We hope to have a public installation of Prism by the end of 2015. We also plan to use Prism in horizontal surfaces such as glass counters or coffee tables.”

Nemesis of print
From the products on display at CES 2015 it’s logical to conclude that E Ink has already done most of the damage it’s going to do to the conventional printed page. After all, e-readers already represent an established market for publishers, and the line has been drawn between those who prefer to read the printed page, and those who choose digital.

Instead, the future of E Ink and Electronic Page Displays lies in enabling the next generation of signage, personal document readers, smart devices and wearable technology – where low-power displays and control surfaces are essential to ensure functionality and energy efficiency.