Today's Trends in Prepress & Color Management

One of the more intricate and necessary components that can be found in the printing industry lies in the successful reproduction of digital imagery in the pre-press stages, especially color which is achieved through color management workflows.

Throughout the years, printing industry leaders have taken great pains to provide accurate reproductions, constantly coming up with new ways to put together color management systems that are in line with the times. The digital norm that we now live in has compelled these companies to think outside of the box with some remarkable success, especially with regards to cloud-based printing and production.

PantoneLIVE is one prime example of how these initiatives have transformed this segment of the industry.

First created by X-Rite in 2012, PantoneLIVE is a color management system that is cloud-based and allows numerous companies and individuals in the global supply chain to have greater proprietary control over color standards from the Pantone library, and in turn gives them a better way to visualize and communicate those ideas of color. This system was also partially created to address the rise in legal cases that had color at the heart of them. As a platform, PantoneLIVE has three tiers of access for digital designers, for those working in digital production on a larger scale and a newer access level for those working in production for textiles, coatings, and plastics. PantoneLIVE licenses are also available for designers; package printers / converters; and industrial manufacturers working with plastics, coatings or textiles.

ColorGATE, a renowned figure in color management has taken newer developments into account with their latest version of their RIP Software. The software package on a whole is designed and calibrated to cooperate with the latest Adobe PDF Print Engine to preview and print PDFs and other documents at various stages of the print process with more efficient and accurate capability.  These newer developments include archiving single print jobs for easier reference into a directory that makes it less trouble to organize.

Connecting The Dots 

This is also helped with a full list of spectrophotometers and other instruments which also include a wide swath created by X-Rite. Another key component to the current tools of color management that they’ve introduced to the industry is their Rapid Spectro Cube, which is an all-in-one device that is able to provide elite ICC profiling from a number of sources ranging from very small ones and processing them with many compatible RIP software packages. Other prominent features include a keen focus on ceramic printing with these accurate color profiles and the utilization of data to help reduce excess ink usage during printing jobs.

Ink suppliers factor in heavily when it comes to prepress, and it’s inevitable that companies with this as their focus would also endeavor to create new workflows in this regard. The Flint Group, through their Paper and Board division has recently released their own digital color management service known as VIVO Colour Solutions. This service is composed of two parts – the VIVO ColourSuite, which allows users to view color performance in real time through a dashboard that’s accessible across multiple websites and machines along with on-press spectral measurement of color per job and the VIVO ColourSuite Viewer which generates vital reports using the data provided by the ColourSuite component to get a better handle on color management compliance and to sort out the factors in a job that could lead to non-compliance.

Innovation at Hand

SAi has seen their outlook rise even further with these newer developments, which is best represented in their collaborative effort with HP, the FlexiPRINT software package. Flexi is their high-powered RIP engine that can handle a number of features like re-sizing, rotating, tiling and nesting for multiple print jobs within seconds. To dig deeper into the nesting aspect, there’s an option to handle it manually or naturally that’s provided. The software package also can be utilized on the go via their mobile application, and there’s a print wizard to help initiate those who were previously unfamiliar with printing in wide-format. And in keeping with the times, there is also a cloud drive that comes with the package that gives access to all pertinent data one would need such as storage updates and reports that give information on jobs being processed in real-time.

The advancements of technology as it relates to color management in the pre-press stages of printing have served to not only expand the horizons of the industry but also reinvigorate the conversation on how companies can observe color but how they can reproduce it. These new developments will undoubtedly serve as the bedrock for more innovation and ultimately a more robust pre-press process.