Is XCMYK a real thing yet?

[gordo]

Go to any Chilis restaurant. Most of their menu products are printed using Method 3 in Gordo's paper, highly pigmented inks.

[SNIP]

Bill Atkinson, legendary Apple programmer, also published a book called "Within the Stone " using Method 3. He used custom inks and custom ICC profiles for each page. There is a PDF on one of his sites detailing the process of creating the book. The book is beautiful, so obviously it can be done with conventional color management, but it's not really commercially viable that way unless it's a very special job.

Having to switch out standard inks for "high density" inks increases production cost and I think makes this solution not commercially viable - unless that's all you do.

That's why Dmaxx was based on using your standard inks with just a change in target SIDs. It let's you be able to offer two different print conditions - for competitive advantage - with very little effort.

 

[[email protected]]

If you have cultivated customers who understand and desire the advantage of print that 'pops' and are willing to pay for that advantage, then it's quite profitable.
If you are competing in the commodity print market, not so much.

Back when we were selling our solution, we had a guy contact us who prints apartment guides. He wanted a little more 'pop', but was more interested in cost than quality.
Highly pigmented inks were ridiculously expensive for his needs.
Dmaxx would have been perfect for him - he would have better quality for a modest upcharge, maybe even at no extra cost.

On the other hand, if you're pushing high end products like jewelry, cosmetics, travel or alcoholic beverages, the extra cost quickly pays for itself.
Especially when your competitors are unable to even bid against you for the job.