How to make color management twice the result with half the effort?
Time:2022-07-25
Views:3448
With the continuous expansion of printing technology in the label and packaging market, how to ensure the consistency of brand owners‘ requirements for their packaging products has become a major challenge for printing enterprises. As turnaround times shorten and operation lengths change, traditional printing techniques can no longer meet all requirements.
Whether in traditional printing or digital printing, color management should be realized by the reasonable cooperation of professional hardware and software. At present, most of the hardware equipment is used by Essali handheld or scanning spectrophotometer equipment, software is a hundred flowers bloom, the current mainstream packaging color management software such as GMG and CGS provide closed-loop correction optimization algorithm, with EPSON digital sampler and special proofing paper to make the printing color as close to unity as possible. Although the software algorithm is more and more advanced after continuous upgrades, but the proofing paper is not printing paper, its final effect is still limited to pre-press correction. The popularity of digital printing allows printing plants to use materials with the same quality as printing for proofing, which makes color management more accurate. At the same time, the cooperation of each major equipment manufacturer‘s own color management software with its own equipment also better shows the accuracy of color.
However, there are still many Indian companies that have introduced color management systems, but still complain that the accuracy of color is not enough, thinking that color management is just an armchair project. In fact, the so-called color management is not a one-time work, it is a constant and continuous calibration process, because both traditional equipment and digital equipment has an abrasion cycles, equipment can‘t always keep the best state, so in the maintenance of the stages at the same time also need to adjust the color conditions, the trace before color by compensating. This requires manpower and time. Monthly, quarterly or annual color correction is usually recommended based on equipment maintenance adjustments. Another problem plaguing printing plants is color tracking, often with customers holding a product and a color number, hoping that printing plants can produce the same color products. Usually, we need to find the PANTONE chromatogram for comparison. If the spot color of the product is manually matched, there will be a slight difference between it and the PANTONE color number. At this time, we can only rely on experience to predict the color ratio, which is greatly affected by human factors.
Taking Sekang CX digital printing press with Sekang XCS Pro 2.0 color management system as an example, it can effectively avoid the interference of these human factors. Each of secon‘s digital presses is equipped with an ASHLEY ILS on-line spectrophotometer, while the operator is provided with an ASHLEY Exact external handheld spectrophotometer. The coordination of internal and external spectrophotometer solves the problem of color stability in continuous production. Firstly, print the test sample containing CMYK color block, and measure the data by external Exact spectrophotometer. The recommended standard value is CMY(1,4)K(1,8). When the standard value is reached, the automatic mode is turned on to print color separation and gradient color blocks at the edge of the page, and at the same time, the internal ILS online spectrophotometer is used for automatic measurement, and the material curve is formed. This process usually takes 5 minutes to complete, and the production and printing can start after the material curve is obtained. Skyriver online through fixed interval spectral density meter could print color piece color density monitoring equipment to ensure the whole roll of product color consistency, even in a long time the printing equipment in the process of loss of or affected by environmental temperature and humidity, also can monitor to the subtle changes and transfer the equipment to make the color of the corresponding compensation to maintain the stability of quality, Such constant adjustments make the product always the same color.
As for Color matching, Secon Color Forecast Pro can quickly match PANTONE spot colors and make dozens of offset colors based on this Color number for users to compare, print results on custom materials for customers to choose the closest Color, and provide matching proportions for each Color. In addition to this, the XCS pro2.0 fully automatic package offered by secon, cloud-based, offers all the benefits of high quality color control -- predictability, repeatability and profitability. Today, Secon has the first digital dry toner webprinting solution that includes self-healing color control, quality control and ICC analysis and PANTONE/ brand color generation that meets all industry standards. At the same time, this scheme can also cooperate with Xeikon PX series inkjet printing equipment.
Cloud-based analysis tools like Secon can diagnose any color problem and prioritize them without delay, greatly improving the productivity of printing companies and making color management more efficient.