Prinect Color Toolbox Reduces Paper Waste and Cuts Makeready Times
Under the right circumstances, the same color-managed workflow that supports a printer's offset department can give all of the components in a print marketing campaign the same look, feel, and color consistency.
Early on, printers strove to make their offset presses print the same. Later, they labored to make early inkjet proofs look like the press sheet. More recently, their goal was to make digital press output look like offset printing. Now, the color of the logo on a 24-foot banner must look the same as the corporate logo color on all the other printed material produced for a specified campaign. But because color variance is unavoidable in campaigns printed on multiple devices, the beating heart of hybrid workflows—and the source of considerable added value—is the degree of color management expertise a printer can demonstrate in ensuring that color is consistent from device to device.
Under the right circumstances, the same color-managed workflow that supports a printer's offset department can give all of the components in a print marketing campaign the same look, feel, and color consistency.
Heidelberg's Prinect Color Toolbox is the color management suite for secure and reliable color calibration. The suite includes a comprehensive set of proven color tools, providing solutions for creating and editing ICC and device link profiles with full support for multicolor (Hi-Fi) printing. Color Toolbox encompasses three modules: Profile Tool, Quality Monitor and Calibration Tool.
Profile Tool creates ICC profiles for printing processes, proofers, color printers and digital output systems. It is the professional tool with which to create ICC profiles interactively for general printing standards or individual requirements. In cooperation with the Quality Monitor, Profile Tool offers the most accurate ICC profiles, high fidelity color proofs and a stable and reliable color process. The creation of profiles with Profile Tool is geared towards ease of use and excellent color separation. The user can adjust black builds with UCR or GCR for printing and proof profiles.
It is also possible to finely adjust depths and color saturation in the profiles. Taking advantage of the industry leading Gray Balance Optimizer with Near Neutral Calibration, Prinect Color Toolbox offers a procedure that results in an even gray balance and a continued optimum coloring of the primaries. Gray Balance Optimization ensures that the dot gains of the chromatic process colors are changed by analyzing the reference printing condition and the printing process to be used. The visual print result corresponds to the reference printing condition with respect to the brightness gradation and gray balance.
Quality Monitor is the ideal tool for seamless process and quality control. It provides every print shop with detailed analysis results. Quality Monitor permits comprehensive comparisons between two sets of measured data and can either display or print reports of that comparison. Long-term data sets also are analyzed to document a quality standard. Quality Monitor supplies a report on the color accuracy of the proof or printed sheet.
Calibration Tool makes it possible to create and centrally manage all the calibration data for the linearization and process calibration of CtP devices and direct imaging presses. The tool supports both the linearization of platesetters and the calibration of the entire production process right up to printing. Calibration Tool offers full curve editing and smoothing capabilities as well as complete support for spot and specialty colors.
The ability to re-calculate existing profiles saves printing of target test charts for each individual process. This creates huge cost savings in the pressroom. The cost and time savings are extended with the support of Mini Spots. These are small measuring elements that are printed during normal production. Building on an existing profile and the measuring data of the Mini Spots means that a profile adjustment can be calculated within a short period of time and made available for the next set of plates. No matter which procedure or process standard a print shop uses, (G7, ISO, SWOP, etc.) Prinect Color Toolbox is a G7 certified tool to achieve the desired result.
