Technical Information

　　

 

Broad sense color management generally refers to the use of certain means to control the color of products to achieve the target color; The narrow sense of printing color management refers to the management of the consistency of design, proofing and production colors based on the standards formulated by the International Color Alliance (ICC) to achieve color consistency on different display media. Color accuracy is the core element of printing production. It is a consensus that various tools and systems should be used to control and manage color.

As a printing enterprise with color reproduction as its main goal, it is actually doing color management, but there is a big difference in the investment and final effect of color management. A considerable number of enterprises attach great importance to color management. They purchase the most advanced color management tools, establish a professional, complete and powerful color management team, and have international color management related certification. They are favored by high-end brands and have a large number of orders. However, some enterprises only have basic color management tools, equipped with basic professional color management personnel, and can only meet the color related requirements of general customers.

Color management is of great significance

　　

 

In terms of technology, color reproduction is a systematic project, with different color rendering principles, different substrates, different colors, different production methods, and different post-treatment processes; Even under the same material and process, the color cannot be kept constant naturally with the change of environment and time. Therefore, in order to achieve consistent and relatively constant color reproduction, it is necessary to adjust and manage the color repeatedly, otherwise it will be out of control and unable to reach the color target, resulting in waste, even chargeback and compensation.

In the customer-centric market competition, color management directly affects the quality and quantity of business received by enterprises. Customers hope that printing enterprises have complete color management tools and perfect color management system, can quickly submit samples that meet the requirements, and can maintain stable color production in the follow-up, otherwise it will affect the trust and confidence of customers and cause loss of orders.

People have higher and higher requirements for environmental protection, and the lack of color management will prolong the adjustment time, resulting in more waste products and wastes. In particular, the increase of hazardous materials will not only increase the processing cost, but also bring more pollution. Good color management can quickly meet color requirements, reduce related waste, and thus reduce environmental pollution.

Four basic elements of realizing color management

　　

 

1

Maintain the stability of materials, equipment and processes

Maintaining the stability of materials, equipment and processes is the basis for the normal and effective operation of color management. The failure of color management is often caused by the poor standardization of the printing workshop. Comparatively speaking, the screen correction and digital proofing in the prepress workshop are highly digitized. Compared with the previous film printing, CTP has made great progress in stability, especially the application of the wash free version, which has further improved the stability of prepress.

The standardization of the printing workshop needs to start from many aspects, train the operators in theoretical knowledge, let them know why they want to do color management, and what they need to do; Establish a sound equipment maintenance system and strictly implement it; All kinds of consumables are stable (take offset printing as an example, such as workshop temperature and humidity, fountain solution, blanket, ink circuit water pressure, etc.), and cannot be replaced without special circumstances. If it is necessary to replace, it needs to be evaluated and retested and curve adjusted; The production process is measured with instruments and strictly controlled by data.

2

Complete color management tools

Color data is the basis for good color management. Now color management tools are more and more automated, intelligent and standardized. For different materials and processes, appropriate tools and schemes need to be selected.

3

Follow the standards and obtain relevant certification

The standard of printing color management is relatively comprehensive and perfect, covering all stages from prepress design, plate making to printing, as well as offset printing, flexographic printing and other different printing methods. In order to implement these standards and meet the strict requirements of international brands, printing standard certification is very necessary. The current G7, PSA, GMI and PSO are mainstream certification processes.

4

Professional talents and organization construction

It is not enough to have only good equipment, materials and tools. The formulation of standards and processes in the factory needs to be selected and created according to the site conditions. These need professional technical and management personnel to form a more complete organization to establish.

How to get high standard

Color accuracy and data integrity

Now printing materials and effects are becoming more and more complex, which brings challenges to accurate measurement. How to obtain a high level of color accuracy and data integrity can start from the following two aspects:

1

Select appropriate measuring tools

　　

 

For different substrates, the structure of the measuring instrument selected should be different. Ordinary paper printing can be detected and controlled by eXact instrument with 45 °/0 ° structure; But for gold and silver paperboard printing, integrating sphere structure spectrophotometer should be selected for measurement; For gold, silver, pearlescent and other special effect inks, it is necessary to use a multi angle spectrophotometer for measurement, otherwise the data will not accurately and completely represent the appearance characteristics of the product, nor can it obtain the results consistent with the visual results.

Color bar is a widely recognized element for color information detection and control in the industry. It contains various color information, such as density, chroma, dot gain, overprint, neutral gray, etc. By measuring and controlling the color control strip, you can control the color of the format more comprehensively. Nowadays, many packages are using spot colors. Large area spot colors can be directly measured, while some small area spot colors need to add color blocks for measurement to achieve data management and control.

In addition, the accuracy and status of tools will change over time, which will affect the reliability of data. Therefore, they need to be maintained, calibrated and calibrated regularly according to the original manufacturer's recommendations and the enterprise's own needs to ensure accurate data.

　　

 

2

Carry out professional technical training

Employees need to get enough training to master the skills to use hardware and software correctly, so that they can use them correctly, interpret the measurement results correctly, and react correctly in a timely manner. At the same time, visual evaluation is still a very important way. After all, the final product is placed on the shelf for consumers to choose. Moreover, the data is obtained in a very specific state, so it is still necessary to evaluate the color by visual inspection. Standard light source, appropriate environment, reasonable sample placement, and evaluated and certified eyes are all very important.

　　

 

With the increasingly fierce market competition, the lack of human resources and the increase of human costs, enterprises are facing more and more challenges in business. Some customers have upgraded the color management system from the following aspects to meet the needs of the new era:

The first is to improve the automatic measurement level of color. The traditional manual single point measurement is time-consuming and laborious, and the accuracy is also low, which cannot meet the needs of rapid response. The upgraded automatic scanning and measuring system IntelliTrax2 can scan a whole color control strip in seconds, so that a large amount of real data can be quickly obtained for subsequent analysis and adjustment.

　　

 

The second is to improve the level of intelligent color control. In the formulation development stage, customers can use IFS6 ink color matching system to intelligently calculate the color formulation of various spot colors, and quickly and accurately prepare the spot colors required by customers. In the production stage, the customer installed a color closed-loop management system to receive the measurement data from the automatic scanning measurement system, perform relevant calculations against the color target, and automatically send the ink volume adjustment information to the printer for ink key adjustment, so that the color that meets the requirements can be printed quickly.

　　

 

In fact, the color data of products are also the digital assets of enterprises. How to properly preserve and reasonably use these assets is also very challenging. The use of professional software to record and regularly collate measurement data can effectively protect these digital assets; Relevant insights can be obtained through professional analysis, which can be used to improve future products and processes. Applications based on network and cloud technology can also effectively save data and easily share it among different departments or factories to maximize effectiveness.