57 Issue 250 - December 2023 / January 2024 email: news@signlink.co.uk COLOUR MANAGEMENT Delivering high quality jobs at the first effort is a sure-fire way of ensuring that customers come back to you with more work, time and time again. While investment in a quality wide-format printer will certainly allow you to achieve quality print, you need to think further when it comes to accuracy. Matching colour to customer requirements is absolutely crucial in printed work, especially with those jobs that carry iconic brands and colours; think the bold red of Coca-Cola or the easily recognisable purple of NatWest. Get this wrong and you risk not only this job but almost certainly repeat business. Here, SignLink takes a closer look at colour management products and analyses how these solutions can help you increase accuracy across wide-format print projects of all shapes and sizes. A Critical Component First, we look to X-Rite, a company based in the US that provides colour measurement and management products to the industry. Dr. Leila Khatai, marketing director for the EMEA region at X-Rite, says as digital printing continues to grow, many companies are moving beyond traditional media to create artwork on substrates like wood, acrylic, textiles, and backlit materials. Khatai explains while the results can be beautiful, achieving exceptional print quality on these materials can be challenging. “International Colour Consortium (ICC) colour management means having a workflow that is predictable, consistent, and repeatable from capture through to proofing and final output,” Khatai says, adding: “To achieve a colour managed workflow, you need to calibrate your devices and create an ICC profile for every component, including the camera, monitor, projector, scanner, and printer. “For the best colour results, you need to calibrate each device that is contributing to your workflow to ensure it is accurately reproducing colour. Next you need to create ICC profiles to ensure they're speaking the same language. With an ICC profile generation tool, you can create profiles for all types of input and output devices, including conventional and digital RGB, CMYK, and CMYK+ (up to four additional colours) printing systems on a wide range of printing substrates so you can trust your colour on any device.” With this, Khatai draws attention to some of the latest and most recent solutions available from X-Rite. Khatai begins with i1Profiler, an ICC profile generation tool that comprises a suite of tools designed to create high-end profiles for all of a KEEPING COLOUR IN LINE Attention to detail is of the utmost importance in wide-format print and signage jobs. With this in mind, we take a look at some of the colour management products that can help ensure high levels of accuracy ▲ Available from X-Rite, the i1Pro 3 Plus can deliver improved measurements on substrates such as vinyl, fabrics, and transparent films
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