COLOUR MANAGEMENT hen it comes to working with leading brands on major marketing campaigns, ensuring you are able to produce printed materials that match their colours is critical. For example, you cannot afford to print the wrong red on Coca-Cola posters or get the famous yellow of the McDonald’s arches wrong in a billboard campaign. For this reason, sign-makers and those working in the large-format print market are advised to invest in quality colour management software. Working with such solutions helps cut out colour inaccuracies at an early stage and prevent issues further down the line. Here, SignLink considers the importance of colour management software to the modern sign-maker and wide-format print business, looking at some of the latest solutions and how ensuring your systems are up to date can help to further improve the quality of larger printed applications. Unpredictable Results X-Rite specialises in colour management, measurement, and control, working with clients across both the commercial print and wide-format markets. Application specialist Liane May says it is a fact that the right colour has an essential influence on a purchasing decision, with the importance of getting this right being critical. “This is one of the reasons why brand manufacturers attach great importance to accurate colour reproduction across the entire range of printed products,” May says adding: “The share of digital printing, especially inkjet printing, on a wide variety of materials – paper, cardboard, foils, plastics, textiles, backlighted materials, metal plates, and ceramics – is always increasing. “From digitisation to editing to final printing, colour data passes through various system components, all of which capture and reproduce colour differently. Scanners, cameras, monitors, and printing technologies with their various printing materials all behave differently and unpredictably in terms of colour.” As a starting point, May highlights ICC colour management, a standardised framework for communicating colour consistently and predictably throughout the entire reproduction workflow. “It is not just an option but is the only way to get colour under control,” May explains, adding: “It enables to reproduce colour data as faithfully as possible on the one hand, but on the other hand to be able to communicate with clients at an early stage how the colour output will change on specific materials and what is achievable.” ICC profiles for input systems, monitors, and printers make it possible to see colour correctly on monitors, how digitised colour looks, and how colour will look on a desired printing process and material. Colour can then be edited in output preview mode, and errors can be detected and corrected in good time, reducing processing times and costs. “By simply switching back and forth between ICC profiles, the colour output of various printing conditions or materials can be simulated on a monitor in just a few seconds,” May explains, continuing: “In addition, ICC profiles make it possible to stabilise the colour print output over time and keep it repeatable, as well as to create cost-effective proof prints in advance for a cost-intensive printing process. Don’t Neglect Management May goes on to say ICC printer profiles are also essential when integrating custom or spot colours, such as Pantone, into the colour management process. In digital printing, spot colours cannot be printed with an additional ink. However, they can be translated into best-possible matching printing system-specific colour values using the ICC profiles, so that time-consuming manual bending of a spot colour for each specific printing condition is no longer necessary. “These advantages of colour consistency, predictability, error, time, and cost minimisation are crucial for production in sign-making and large-format printing,” May adds. For this reason, May says updating colour management software and systems is critical to ensure the user benefits from the latest advancements and developments with this sort of technology. Staying in Control 46 Issue 254 - August / September 2024 www.signlink.co.uk With attention to detail of paramount importance in large-format print, we take a closer look at colour management software and find out how updating your systems can help ensure accuracy in printed work ▲Colour management software is a key tool in ensuring accurate output in wide-format print
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjM0NDIxOA==