Ink Saving solution?

[Louis Dery]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi Todd,

I completely agree with your description of the benefits of using DeviceLink profiles in RIP. Also, just let you know that with very low ink coverage (240) and good GCR engine, you won’t loose color accuracy if you use the right DeviceLink tool!

Louis Dery
TGLC inc.
www,tglc.com
Color management solutions

 

[jschrieber]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

We're a newspaper of about 180,000 daily circulation .... ManRoland presses, PPI layout/output, Agfa GRAFIXrip RIPs, and we use OneVision's Asura product extensively in our workflow ....

We began using OneVision's InkSave plugin in their AsuraPro product about a month ago, and so far results have been terrific. As long as black is maintained at a consistent level, photos actually look a little better than they used to. Myself, I haven't heard of any negative feedback.

It's wonderfully simply to incorporate .... a couple settings and away you go .... TAC can be manipulated in the plugin as well, and our PrePress Mgr is testing different settings now.

Too early to provide any specific feedback on true savings, but judging from what we see in the page views of the seps provided by our output software, there will definitely be some savings there.

Only thing I don't like so far is the change we had to make to our graybar at the bottom of each page which was modified to provide a black square at eight points across the page for pressroom to get a good black measurement all across the page .... not wild about the way that looks, but again, haven't heard any specific complaints about it.

All in all, thus far it's very encouraging.

jack
omaha

 

[gordo]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Jack,

What ink sequence are you running?

thx, gordo

 

[jschrieber]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hey Gordon,

I'm a systems person .... not press .... but I'm told it's C M Y K
I'll just have to go along with that.

jack

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi all,

We are evaluating the Alwan and GMG ink saving products and the question I have for all the experienced users of these products is how did you go about determining if you were indeed saving ink?

Many thanks,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing

 

[gordo]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

With the Kodak ColorFlow Software Ink Optimizing Option you can compare pre and post ink usage by looking at the data from Kodak PrintLink digital ink-profiling software or the file bitmaps using Virtual Proofing Software.

thx, gordo

 

[stargate]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Jon, look at pages 53-55 of gmg inkOptimizer tutorial.

 

[Gretscher]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

To Jon Morgan:

I am currently doing a research on the effect of Alwan Optimizer's ink saving feather.
Since I alway work in the lab and have no way to measure the real ink amount for a big amount of press run.
My way is check and compare the two files (before and after being optimized) in Photoshop.
Select the black channel and observe whether the after-optimized file displays higher density.
In the meantime, the CMY channel should give a lower density when each of their channel been selected.
I am also curious about if any other methods used to measure the amount of ink saving?

 

[rich apollo]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

If you're playing with Alwan, take a look at the Statistics panel. If you work at inputting the right data Alwan will tell you exactly how much ink you're saving - theoretically. The trick is figuring out how many grams of ink get used per square meter of substrate (or image). The default is 1.5, but I roughly calculated ours to about a tenth of that.

So, it'll tell you how much less ink is called for in the file, but then you have to wonder about the press guys running up the ink keys because they've got more "head room".

rich

 

[Lee Hutchinson]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Rich,

Your spot on on the ink stats and as you say all you have to do is put the correct paramaters in and it will even work out the cost saving based on your ink price.

The press minders however should have no need and also not any real scope to bang up the weights on press. As the GCR is replacing CMY with K they can't push the weights much without fill in and deviance from proof. Only the black is going to have any real effect and pumping this up would give a real dirty look.

The press minders should love it as make ready is quicker and easier. Another show of technology saving them from getting their hands dirty!

Lee

 

[Sylvain.H]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi,

I'd like to know if any INKSAVE solution has ever allowed real savings ! My resellers keep on telling me I WILL SAVE 30% ink !
I believe what I see, and I've never seen such a miracle !

Thanks

 

[stargate]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

I would say that 30% is too optimistic but it all depends... The most you save if you use uncoated papers on web presses. Reseller is like a car salesman... Get demos and test it for yourself. I have seen lots of ink reduction after I run test images on my press. I wanted to see if images after the reduction still match originals and they do. The important issue is that you will save on ink but also your make ready time is shortened, you will have much better gray balance, it's easier to reprint the same job as you will have less color variation and your job will dry faster as it uses less ink. It's not only about ink reduction. You will save time on the press on every job and time is money...

 

[Louis Dery]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Want to evaluate ink savings solutions?

We’ve build a FREE utility which allows to calculate ink area coverage difference from 2 CMYK TIFF or JPEG images.
It is called PerfX Image Ink™ (Mac and Windows versions available).

Download link:
http://www.tglc.com/english/PerfX/image_ink_saving.html

Hope this utility will help everyone to put some light on the real ink saving % announced by many ink saving solutions.

Louis Dery
Color Management Expert
TGLC inc.
www.tglc.com
[email protected]
1-418-877-9114

 

[stargate]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Can't wait for MAC version...

 

[Louis Dery]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi Ryan,

Tomorrow, Mac OS X version will be available.

Louis Dery
TGLC inc.

 

[tmiller_iluvprinting]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi Louis,
Tools like this really appeal to my inner 'color geek!' I have one question, is the max coverage computed from the single darkest pixel in the image, or an average of the darkest pixels? I am asking because I can't seem to find the max sum the tool is giving me when I use my eyedropper in PS(although it is close when I use point sample.) If the max coverage is computed from the single darkest pixel finding the sum in PS would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Please do not take this as a complaint, I still find the tool to be interesting and helpful and I send my thanks to TGLC!
Best regards,
Todd

 

[Louis Dery]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Hi Todd,

Yes, the tool find the pixel with the higher value.

Thnaks for the good comments!

Louis Dery
TGLC inc.

 

[Smitty]

Another player entering the Ink Save market is OneVision with a plug in to their Speedflow or Asura file normalisation software. I work for a pre-press house in Australia and we are a reseller for their software. I have a copy of OneVision's software on my laptop. Rather than make any claims about how good this option is verses others, I'd like to offer to run any file through InkSave and provide the output file. The advantage of OneVision's offer is that the InkSave is not profile based (i.e. it's a 4D to 4D conversion) so no matter what output device is intended to be used you don't need the vendor to supply a special set of ink save profiles specific to each device.

I make this offer to have any file passed through OneVision's most current version of InkSave as it also allows me to confirm with real customers that the technology works. I have an FTP site so if anyone does have a test file they want me to run for them, just contact me and I'll provide the details.

Regards,
Smitty

 

[patrickvd]

Re: Ink Saving solution?

Smitty,

Just want to clarify here that not all vendors force you to supply "special" devicelinks for saving ink.
The Alwan technology (just won the InterTech Award) is using the unique "Dynamic DeviceLink Technology" that builds those DeviceLinks for you "on-the-fly" and are analyzing the content of your page. This means that even on a single page PDF the software sometimes uses multiple devicelinks for doing the conversion. You don't need to be an expert to build those profiles as the software is doing it for you....

Regards,

Patrick

 

[Gerd]

When using ApogeeX 3.5 or higher, why don´t use devicelinked profiles direkt in renderer or pdfrenderer?
That works fine and there is no extra time for prozessing and no different interpretation.

You can use self created devicelinked profiles or buyed one.

Regards
Gerd