Print Standardisation

Why Standardise?
Standardisation is about controlling the process. This leads to:

• Better print quality – the press is optimised
• Repeatability – all printers have faced the problem of having to do a re-print and without a standardised press, it is very difficult to do.
• Greater efficiency – a standardised workflow means that everyone is working along the same lines. When pre-press, proof, and print all meet the same criteria, printing is much easier – no need for extensive adjustments to be done on the press
• Cost reduction – Fewer press adjustments means less ink and paper waste during make-ready, less repeated jobs, as well as less operator overtime
• Higher profitability – cost reduction, together with the ability to print more jobs during the day,means more profit.

Why Not Use Custom Profiles
The use of custom profiles has serious limitations, and should only be used under certain circumstances (defined later in the presentation).
Characterisation data not optimised – it is impossible to achieve a perfect print, so even with tightly controlled conditions, the data needs to be smoothed and optimised before creating a profile
• Most printers do not know how to optimise the test chart print run, and lack the tools and knowledge to treat the subsequent characterisation data.
%nbsp; – The result is that the profile has faults, and all data converted with it subsequently inherits them

The following slide shows some examples of typical everyday press condition
Data from a typical non-standardised press run

Skewed TVI (dot gain) above means a prominent Magenta cast to all, reddish mid-tones, and bluish quarter tones.
Grey balance is totally skewed – red/blue highlights, reddish mid-tones, near neutral shadows. Lightness also incorrect as CMY is darker than the reference K value.
In many cases it can be worse than this example.

Non optimised Profile Creation
In the previous example, the press profile would be made from these conditions in order to be used for colour conversion and proofing. The result is:

• All data converted with this profile will inherit these sub-optimal characteristics
• In most cases, the colour space of the press is being limited – smaller than ISO
• Proofing and managing any incoming CMYK data means necessarily to do a file conversion as no data from other sources will match these conditions

Other reasons for not using custom profiles

Leads to a more complicated workflow.
• Customers cannot be expected to use these profiles for their data as they may need to print in different places, reprint, or do not know at creation time where the jobs will be printed

• As a result, data will normally have to be converted before printing and proofing
• It is often not clear what the source space is to convert from
• All conversions cost colour quality and precision
• More steps for human error to come into play

Repeatability failure

• The press situation in most cases is totally arbitrary – the profile created today, will not necessarily be useful in a couple of months, and due to a lack of process control and documentation, it is not known how to return to that printing state

Consider the following scenario

The printer creates a profile and uses it for separations, proofing and printing for three months. He finds that after time, however, the press has changed and so makes a new profile. He then proceeds to use the new profile for all of the previously defined processes. A customer comes, however and wants to do a re-print. It would normally be difficult to do a reprint, but in this case, the customer wants to use 20 pages from the last job (old profile) and add another 40 pages using the new profile. Not a simple problem. The printer has three possibilities.

1. Use the old profile for the new pages as well and re-print all with the same profile. This keeps data standardised, but does not meet the current press condition.
2. Use new profile for new data and combine with the old data. Sure recipe for trouble as the separations are different as are the proofs
3. Convert old data to new profile and combine with new pages. Probably the best option, but this is never perfect, and always requires some retouching. Also complicates the workflow, adding an extra step.

Multiple Printing Machines

• It is often not known on which machine a job will be printed until late in the process, and scheduling can also change at the last minute so jobs move to one machine or the other.
• If the printer is using different profiles for different machines, this is very complicated to handle. Data needs to be reprocessed for the other printing machine, once again opening the door for error, increasing the time and labor needed, and a loss in colour precision.

Liability – In most cases, proof/press mismatches are press related as it is a much more
complex process and depends on many factors. It is also the last place printers normally
decide to identify where the error is.

• The proof is often blamed even though it is totally stable

If you have an independent reference such as a standard provides, it is simple to demonstrate where the problem lies.

How Does Standardisation Solve these problems

Non-optimised profiles – ISO profiles are already made under optimal conditions, by experts,and tested by thousands of users. There is no need to make new profiles.

Reduced colour conversions – When all presses are printing to ISO, normally no conversion is necessary. More and more users worldwide are using ISO profiles, so any data coming in with these conditions is ready to print with no further treatment needed.

Repeatability. Just as a drifting printer is recalibrated back via the proofing, so the press is recalibrated back to the standard with PCPro, allowing for the same print colour and quality time after time. No new press profile is necessary.

Multiple printing machines. As all machines are made to pint to ISO specifications, no colour transformation is necessary when a job needs to be printed on a different machine. At most, only new plates are needed in the event that the plate transfer curves are different for the other machine.

Situations for Custom Profiles
When to use custom profiles
• Can only be done correctly when the whole process is supervised or done using the custom profile from beginning to end – colour separations, retouching, proof, print.

Custom profiles make sense when:

• There is no standard available, ie; flexography
• High-gamut printing with special inks
• Multi-colour – HexaChrome, etc.
• Special screening
• Special media – art paper, etc.

In all cases, the same process control parameters apply – colourimetry of materials, TVI, trapping, Grey balance, etc. What changes are the reference value’s.
PressView should still be used in the case of custom profile usage, only new reference Value’s need to be defined.