Page 56 - Print21 Jan-Feb 2020

Software
Colour your world – and
manage it well
Unless you’re producing black-and-white art prints or running off pages and pages of text-only books, colour is an integral part of the printing process – particularly for the brands that make up such a significant portion of print’s customer base, as Jake Nelson discovered when he spoke to colour management experts.
With colour increasing brand recognition by 80 per cent, and 90 per cent of customers’ subconscious judgment of a product being based on colour alone, it is vital that printers get colour right.
But with so many variables in the print process, that is easier said than done – in fact, with different ink
types, different substrates, different print technologies, and different production units, operating in different atmospheric conditions, some say it is remarkable that colour is ever matched.
However, matched it is, with printers increasingly able to provide the perfect repro for the clients, with the first image matching the last, whether output is in Melbourne, Manchester or Manila, and whether on offset, toner or inkjet.
The importance of colour cannot
be underestimated – ask any brand manager and they will tell you they live or die by it. Steve Jackson, executive director at brand production and deployment company Schawk says, “Colour can both mirror and influence our emotions. It can affect how shoppers feel about a product or brand. There are feelings around colours, like red being bold and exciting. Yellow is about attention, youth and happiness, but can also mean something is on discount,” says Jackson.
According to Jackson, inconsistency in colour can snowball and water down the value of a brand.
“It’s a bit like the schoolyard game of Whispers. Multiply that
Colour management: tools can help make sure you get exactly the right hues for your clients
by four different items and pieces of packaging in our world for the same brand – and then add the continuum of time – and things change. Suddenly, you have a brand in a different position, which could devalue it significantly, and that’s why it is so important,” he says.
Shoot for colour
targets
David Crowther, also known as the Colour Doctor, is director of Colour Graphic Services. He advises that colour management is vital to print businesses, and that printers should do their best to be colour-savvy rather than trusting it to others.
“End users should take the time to invest in colour management training and buying some colour management tools, and then look after the colour quality in print themselves. If they don’t control the colour, the colour will control them.
“There should always be a definite target for colour, whether it’s in CMYK, spot, or brand colours,” he says.
Colour Graphic Services offers colour management assistance and technologies from companies such as Techkon, Printflow,
Just Normlicht, Mellow Colour, ColorLogic, and Eizo; it also has onsite G7 expert consulting.
“There’s new measurement equipment and software from
time to time, but fundamentally
it still requires attention to the basics – looking after your print hardware (regular maintenance and
servicing) and making sure you have a procedure for evaluating colour quality on a regular basis.
“Usually, you might need a number of different types of hardware
and software to fill your colour quality and colour management requirements. It’s one thing to colour manage your print process, but you need procedures in place to monitor and evaluate colour as well.
“Based on that, you can determine whether the colour is in tolerance – if it’s out of tolerance, you’ll need to take remedial action to get everything back in line,” says Crowther.
The process of colour
Colour calibration is an important part of the colour management process – but it’s not the whole of it, says Yves Roussange, owner and managing director of Soltect, who points out that an estimated 85 per cent of PDFs received by printers in Australia have not been exported properly.
“This is why some printers have difficulty with their colour output – it’s garbage in, garbage out.
“For me, colour management is part of the process, not additional to it. It’s about educating people on setting up their rip the right way,” he says.
According to Roussange, colour calibration is only step three in the process – step one lies with the designer, and step two is correctly exporting the PDF.
“When people create the artwork, they need to export the InDesign
56 Print21 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020