Color management is a process that identifies and characterizes each device in the imaging workflow to ensure all devices are speaking the same language. As defined by the ICC (International Color Consortium), a color managed workflow is predictable, consistent, and repeatable from capture through proofing to final output.
With digital color management, everyone involved in the print workflow can reference spectral values for specified colors and check accuracy at multiple steps along the way.
The Digital Color Workflow
Digital color management closes the gap between brand expectations and design, ink room, prepress, and press operators to ensure good quality.
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During design, it means accurately specifying colors for reproduction on the final material and using calibrated monitors to understand achievability.
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In the ink room, it means formulating the right color, quickly.
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For prepress, it means calibrating all devices involved to ensure color is accurately viewed and clearly communicated.
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In the pressroom, it means securing measurements directly from the press, adjusting ink keys as needed, then measuring and reporting on the results of those adjustments.
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Throughout the entire process, standards like CxF, G7, and M-standards help ensure accurate communication.
Even if you’re dealing with multiple operators, jobs, machines, and sites, effectively linking your color workflow is a breeze… if you have the right tools. Today we’ll outline digital color management tools that can help you keep color on track in a busy pressroom.
Digital Color for Design
For design and brands, PantoneLIVE Production - Print and Packaging can ensure the specified color is reproducible and properly communicated throughout the workflow. It enables brands to clearly specify color and designers to design a new product with the substrate in mind to set clear expectations.
PantoneLIVE is a secure, cloud-based repository of common Pantone color libraries and the corresponding dependent color standards based on 28 common printing substrates. Using a spectrophotometer, printers can capture spectral values for print samples and verify them against the digital standard throughout production to ensure color is within tolerance.
Digital Color for Prepress
With many color management systems, you need to calibrate your devices and create an ICC profile for each particular device, including output devices like monitors, presses, and printers. i1Publish Pro 3 helps imaging and prepress professionals create custom profiles for RGB, CMYK and CMYK+4 printers. It also reads on-screen color patches to calibrate and match multiple displays for consistent color viewing.
To learn more about color management, including why it is important and the meaning of terms like color gamut, rendering intents, color space, perceptual rendering, and profile connection space, read our color management resource.
Digital Color in the Ink Room
The ink room is one area of the workflow that is often overlooked, but if there are problems with the ink – the incoming materials are faulty or formulations are not accurate – color will suffer in the pressroom. Ink formulation doesn’t need to be overly complex or time consuming. With Ink Formulation software even novice users can formulate fast, accurate, consistent recipes using digital color ink specifications. This blog explains how IFS can also help improve ink sustainability by using the colorants you have on hand first.
A spectrophotometer is another useful tool for digital color management in the pressroom. With eXact 2, formulators can clearly communicate color data to printers and converters and formulate fast, accurate recipes for a wide variety of substrates, including flexible film. Since it measures without contact, eXact 2 prevents wet ink contamination and the need to remeasure.
You can learn more in our eXact 2 for Ink Suppliers blog.
Digital Color in the Pressroom
The eXact 2 portable spectrophotometer can also be used in the pressroom. This device makes it very easy for printers and packaging converters to measure paper and flexible film substrates with one device to understand, control, manage, and communicate color from anywhere on the pressroom floor.
With an onboard high-resolution camera to power Mantis video targeting technology and a unique Digital Loupe feature, eXact 2 can zoom in on the measurement area to inspect patches, analyze dot gain, and read plates and save an image of a color measurement for compliance. eXact 2 can help you get to make-ready color in less time, saving wasted substrate and ink. This device also connects with InkFormulation software and ColorCert (which we'll discuss in a minute) so press operators can quickly evaluate color quality right from eXact 2's color screen.
Check out our eXact 2 Blog for Printers and Converters for more information about eXact 2 features.
Managing Digital Color Across a Global Print Workflow
Even if you’re employing color management during each stage of production, you need to be able to effectively communicate what’s happening between stakeholders to ensure color remains consistent. Instead of looking at each step in the printing workflow as an island, the key to accuracy and consistency is to look at color holistically – from the time it is specified until the time the final product is delivered - using a color management system.
Print Specification, Quality Control, and Quality Assurance
That’s the beauty of our ColorCert Suite. Utilizing a combination of desktop modules, everyone in the workflow – including prepress, ink room, and pressroom, in one site or many – can be linked to communicate color and print expectations, color standards, tolerances, press setup information and on-press performance.
Device Performance
Another step to ensure color consistency across your supply chain is to certify your instruments. NetProfiler, a cloud-based blend of software and color standards from X-Rite, allows you to verify and optimize the performance of your color measurement instruments. It not only reduces variances among measurement devices, it can actually correct issues caused by age, wear or environmental conditions. Of course, you should still plan to send instruments to our labs for formal certification on a periodic basis.
Device Visibility
The X-Rite Link dashboard is an innovative online platform that provides real-time insight into your entire fleet of devices to reduce manual management, ensure optimal device performance, and streamline the service process. It's ideal for printers with multiple sites to monitor and control color measurement devices to eliminate manual tracking and wasted time. With X-Rite Link, you can get up-to-date device status, including certification, NetProfiler, warranty, and Service Care Plans, assign locations for active asset management, and customize parameters to fit your unique workflow.
Start Small and Build On
Using digital color standards, implementing color management at each step of your workflow, and overlaying management solutions like ColorCert and NetProfiler will create a reliable, end-to-end process. But you don’t have to do it all at once.
From novice to professional, X-Rite's range of color management solutions are easy to set up and offer excellent results, even for those without a lot of color knowledge. We’ve also compiled a wealth of color education and industry knowledge in our Resource Center to help you create and successfully control your own color program.
Get in touch if you’d like to speak with a Color Expert about your color workflow, or take our Color Control Freak eLearning course to learn more about color management.
