Association Insights: Expanded-Gamut Printing Garners Worldwide Approval

Idealliance’s XCMYK dataset and profiles supporting 4-color expanded gamut printing are being met with an overwhelmingly positive response from print and technology providers across the globe. Idealliance released the XCMYK profile late last year, announcing a new color space for general industry use on offset and digital presses and other digital devices. Since that time, companies around the world have applauded its benefits.

“Having conducted a gamut analysis of the Idealliance XCMYK dataset, and compared it to our industry’s most common targets, including GRACoL 2013 and Fogra 51, we concluded that XCMYK provides a significantly larger color gamut without adding any primary inks to CMYK,” reports Dr. Kiran Deshpande, color and print management specialist for Multi Packaging Solutions Ltd. In the UK, whose comments are representative of test responses. “CMYKOGV gamut (Press1) is only 14% bigger than XCMYK gamut. XCMYK is an important tool for print service providers seeking the latest tools and methodologies to better serve their customer’s quality needs,” Deshpande adds.

When anything is released internationally, especially something as advanced as XCMYK, which required collaboration from individuals and suppliers from around the world, it’s very gratifying to see such a universally positive response from the world print markets – and the feedback, downloads, reports, data, analyses, and adoption did not just come from one print medium, but from offset, digital, inkjet-cut sheet, and wide format, and from print service providers, OEMs, creatives, brands, and suppliers.

The XCMYK research project was overseen by the Idealliance GRACoL Working Group and a special task force of more than 100 professionals from 88 companies, and involved nearly two years of test runs from all over the world and significant contributions of press runs, time, labor, and raw materials from printers, manufacturers, and Idealliance volunteers, with total time and raw materials estimated at more than $350,000.

Pursuing maximum color

Since 2006, Idealliance’s GRACoL (General Requirements for Applications in Commercial Offset Lithography) has enjoyed enormous success as a worldwide default color space for preparing CMYK files. The combination of GRACoL and G7 has greatly improved the efficiency and consistency of print production, not only in offset but also in other printing methods such as flexo, gravure, inkjet, and electrophotography.

For many printers and print buyers, GRACoL has become the de-facto standard for exchanging CMYK files between one process and another. The one limitation of GRACoL: Its color gamut is noticeably smaller than that of many new printing methods, which puts GRACoL printers at a disadvantage when maximum color saturation is required. GRACoL is perfect for general commercial printing, but falls short of the richly saturated color gamut needed for packaging and high-impact printing.

When more color is needed on press, the traditional solution is to augment the CMYK inks with additional inks and custom ICC profiles under the generic term “expanded gamut” (or “extended gamut”) printing. Unfortunately, however, this approach lacks the standardization benefits of GRACoL, because every expanded gamut system uses its own unique ink colors, software, and ICC profiles, and files made for one system cannot be printed directly on another.

This is the challenge that continues to be addressed by the ongoing Idealliance Expanded Gamut Project. The project seeks to make expanded-gamut printing easier and more efficient by researching and publishing optimized methodologies, ink specifications, and ICC profiles. The goal of the project: Bring at least some of the convenience and easy file interchange already enjoyed by GRACoL to the expanded gamut market. But first some basic questions must be answered, such as how many inks are needed, and what color should they be?

Achieving full color potential

Traditional expanded-gamut offset uses up to seven inks – normal CMYK plus (typically) orange, green and/or violet – hence the generic process name, “CMYKOGV.” Optimizing the OGV ink colors is a key goal of the Expanded Gamut Project, but an equally important goal is to determine how the CMYK inks should be printed.

If the CMYK inks are printed to GRACoL specifications only, the full potential of CMYKOGV printing cannot be achieved, because the OGV inks do nothing to expand the gamut in pure cyan, magenta, or yellow areas. To maximize the gamut of 7-color printing, the gamut of the CMYK inks must be expanded independently of the OGV inks, which brings us to the concept of XCMYK, or “eXpanded-gamut CMYK.”

The XCMYK and CMYKOGV expanded-gamut methods are not competitive, but rather symbiotic, because XCMYK already defines the CMYK gamut of an optimized CMYKOGV color space. XCMYK is simply a more cost-effective stepping-stone whose color space (and costs) lie somewhere between GRACoL and CMYKOGV.

So, which should you use?

• If you want the very largest color space possible, and the work merits the cost of extra color units, use CMYKOGV.
• If you want a color space significantly richer than GRACoL, but less expensive and complicated than CMYKOGV, use XCMYK.
• If you want excellent commercial color printing with maximum file interchange potential, but don’t have the need for expanded gamut, use GRACoL.

Regardless of which system you use, remember that because GRACoL, XCMYK, and CMYKOGV are all based on the same CMYK inks and G7, they share many of the benefits that have made GRACoL so successful. These include easier file exchange, standardized ICC profiles, standardized proofing specifications, and standardized workflows.

XCMYK (4-Color Expanded Gamut) is an Idealliance GRACoL Working Group research program that explores the maximum color gamut achievable with just four (CMYK) inks and represents just one part in a series of Idealliance expanded gamut initiatives. The Idealliance Print Properties and Colorimetric Council and GRACoL Working Group is currently conducting a traditional expanded color gamut (CMYK+OGV) research and education project, with details expected to be announced soon. To learn more about XCMYK and the Idealliance GRACoL Working Group or to download XCMYK profiles, datasets, and other information, go to idealliance.org/gracol or contact Tim Baechle at [email protected] or 703/837-1069.

Tim Baechle

Idealliance VP of Global Print Technologies & Workflow

Tim Baechle is an experienced production executive who has served with industry companies in the United States, Europe, and South America. A speaker at industry trade events throughout Europe and author of white papers and articles for industry magazines worldwide, he is a British Printing Industries Federation and InterTech Global Innovation program award honoree.