Forget the Standards!

jardo

Well-known member
Ok, so I can linearize an Inkjet proofer to have a great big gamut, why can't I do this with my sheetfed offset litho press? I know all the plus's & minus's to going by the standards and I don't want to go down that road, but I don't want to be like the rest of the sheep (Bahh Bahh) and print to a standard. I think we can achieve color better than the standards and want our customers to know it and take advantage of it. Yes I know, if they design and squash down their pretty images into SWOP color space, that they have now limited themselves to that color space and now can not take advantage of the "BIG" color space I hope to accomplish. That's a whole nother thread.

So my question is two-fold. Correct me if I am wrong, but I will need to linearize my press first, right? Being in a perfect world I will beilieve all the mechanics of my press are good. If I am linearized, I would be gray balanced, right? This would give me my max gamut achievable on that particular press, right?

Now let say I profile my great big linearized color space and I want to create a device link that goes to another big color space, what's out there that I can use besides the standards that limit my color? Is there one out there? Is my best bet to just use my linearized press profile to achieve maximum color?

I thank all that comment in advance!
Jeffrey J.
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

>Ok, so I can linearize an Inkjet proofer to have a great big gamut, why can't I do this with my sheetfed offset litho press?

Linearization isn't actually creating the great big gamut, merely attempting to get a consistent and stable response. The devices gamut would be dependent upon the ink pigmentation and the amount of ink being layed down. There often is a fine line between maximum gamut and simply slopping on too much ink while not achieving anymore perceived saturation. Inkjets have a bigger gamut because their using higher chroma inks rather than as a result of any linearization/calibration process.

>If I am linearized, I would be gray balanced, right?

Default answer...I doubt it. Depends on what you mean by "linearization". An offset press's default response is far from "linear "due to dot gain (a 50% on the file does not equal a 50% on the sheet). One could linearize the press, but this would actually be subduing color for images prepared for SWOP and would not automatically achive gray balance. I think what you might mean instead is a methodology to achieve a optimal and predictable response on press. So far there is only one methodology whose primary goal is acheiving gray balance, G7. The ISO standard has gray balance as a secondary metric to TVI. System Brunner places priority on gray balance as well, but its not a mtehodology that you can implement freely or as easily in my opinion

Current standards and specification (notable Gracol and ISO 12647-2) define metrics that result in quite a decent gamut given the ink sets. If you wanted to achieve more "color" from those inks, you could attempt a pressrun wherein you increase density (ink film thickness) to a point where maximum chroma is achieved...at some point you'll be increasing ink film thickness and not achieving any more chroma and at that point your just wasting ink. You might also consider that a press might be more unstable pushing the maximum with these inks and that the most stable response is likely close to current specifications for solid Lab.

Another consideration is to go with an ink set that has more pigmentation to broaden the gamut or a Hexachrome type process...gray balance could get real tricky here. Or how about simply enhancing your screening to stocastic. Better perceived result if done correctly even when conforming to a specification, a bit more challenging as far as process control, but customers like it.

>Now let say I profile my great big linearized color space and I want to create a device link that goes to another big color space, what's out there that I can use besides the standards that limit my color? Is there one out there? Is my best bet to just use my linearized press profile to achieve maximum color?

If you go this route your best option is to profile your press in its beefed up condition, and hope that its stable.
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

I agree with Michael's comments 100%.

If you do decide to do this, will you be printing images you receive, or images that you create? If you receive them, are they not SWOP? And if they are SWOP, they look "natural" on GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 official profile (and would look the same soft-proofed for GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 as the press sheet if you set up the press using G7). This means you can accept SWOP-separations and print them until the point you get the GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 profiles to your customers and they start using them. For uncoated, you'll have to make your own profile, or use ISOuncoated (closest uncoated profile to G7 NPDCs).

Don
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

You have to also remember that most inkjet proofers (for example, Epsons) have an enlarged inkset (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta, light black, light light black, etc.) that helps stabilize and enlarge the gamut. I mean, if inkjet proofers weren't stable and couldn't replicate the specifications such as SWOP and GRACoL, what good would they be? Also, as a side note, the profiles that generally come with the Epsons are dead on. You can't make better, more complete profiles if you tried.

Anyway, the whole purpose of the SWOP, GRACoL, and other specifications are to provide your clients (and yourself) with predictable and repeatable results assuming the stability of your press. In theory, you +could+ push the gamut of your press by creating your own profiles outside of the realm of any popular specifications, but this would be a lengthy and expensive process (probably more so than implementing SWOP or GRACoL). In the end, the gamut is probably not going to be that much larger than you can get with the so-called "standards".

Again, think about your clients. Suppose you have a client who goes through multiple print suppliers. Your competitors provide a job to a spec, while you've got your own magic mix. Your color may be "better," but does it match what the other print suppliers are providing? Where are your clients going to go? Probably to the places that provides color consistency.

As my professor Bill Pope once said, it's not the size of your gamut that matters, it's how you use it.
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

>as a side note, the profiles that generally come with the Epsons are dead on. You can't make better, more complete profiles if you tried.

Further side note...I'm always a bit skeptical of supplied profiles, but moreover, the profiles supplied by Epson are RGB profiles. No problem with that in an of itself, but many pro level Rips/workflows won't support them. They're also specific to the Epson media being used, as one would expect.
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

Jeffrey-
You might be interested in our process - we have a system for printing 4/c process at much higher densities.

Our clients still provide printing to standards like SWOP, and charge extra for customers who want their jobs to have more visual impact.
The process is quite a bit more involved than linearization, because when printing at densities like 1.7C, 1.7M, 1.30Y and 1.95K, production variables become much more critical. Paper optical gain, for example, has a much more visible effect than when printing weaker densities. You could get some highly pigmented inks and fiddle around with plate curves and color management settings and get good results on one particular paper on one particular press for one particular job - people have been doing that for years, but it's hardly a profitable endeavor.
We use a combination of dynamic press modeling algorithms to predict the behavior of the inks when printed singly, and in 2 and 3 color overprints, to compensate for press characteristics, proofing system characteristics, paper optical gain, and even proof-to-proof variation, so that we can provide accurate, manageable printing at high densities, in a commercially viable way.

Hope this helps,
-don

Don Ashe
Director of Customer Services
www.ColorControlNetwork.com
214.540.8939
469.865.6758 (cell)
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

>Our clients still provide printing to standards like SWOP, and charge extra for customers who want their jobs to have more visual impact.

Wow, that's some literature you have there. I noticed that there are specific CCN inks recommended. For clients still printing to SWOP/Gracol, do you allow for a CMYK to CMYK conversion (your press characterization process looks decidedly different than ICC profiling) or would this be a matter of switching back to ISO 2846 compliant inks? I'm assuming CCN currently supports only halftone prrofing devices due to the density/dotgain based process, or are their plans on supporting non-halftone (inkjet) proofers?
 
Re: Forget the Standards!

Michael-
Yes, our clients have to switch back to ISO compliant inks when they are done with a CCN run.
When a customer submits a SWOP prepared file to them and requests CCN process, they use some photoshop tools we provide to redistribute the tone reproduction and enhance detail in the shadow areas to take advantage of the larger color space. Often they will proof a job to standards, and also make a second proof at CCN densities, and give the customer 2 quotes to choose from. This makes a great sales tool!

Our press characterization process is aimed at capturing the press characteristics across a wide range of solid densities, so it is a bit different than the "snapshot" approach of an ICC profile. The idea is to create a model of the press behavior which can be used to predict how a given job will perform on press. The actual press run is very simple, but what we do with the data is pretty different.

We are feverishly working on an ink jet proofing solution. We have a completely "tried and true" solution for proofing on the Kodak Approval, which has been in commercial use for 3 years now, and fortunately for us, ink jet technology has lept ahead in those few years. When we tried experimenting with a dye based iris a few years back, the results were not encouraging.
With the newer pigment based inks, we've had some extremely encouraging results, so I think we are only a couple months away from offering a really killer ink jet proofing solution.

Thanks for your interest!,
-don
 

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