The Printer Manager Must Understand Color Management Knowledge (I)

Poor printers, they are at the end of the "food chain" of printing production, and customers are always picking in front of them to demand quality. Will color management technology make their situation better? Can it replace those technologies that have long made the state of the print operator more difficult?

From non-alcoholic dampening to waterless offset printing to FM screening technology, the printing industry R&D staff has provided a series of new products and technologies to the printing operators, but at the same time it also limits the freedom and choice of printing operations. In spite of this, the printing operator still hopes to master these new technologies and integrate well with the printing press to meet the matching requirements of various proofs.

SWOP (rotational printing process specification parameter) pointed out: The printer's primary responsibility is to restore the appearance of proofs. The SWOP provides some guidelines that should be followed in rotary printing to help printers fulfill this responsibility. When the printing factory receives electronic documents, films and standard proofs, it should confirm that there is no change or loss at the time of transfer. All elements and components should be in the best condition and meet the requirements of various standards. When receiving electronic documents, printers should handle these documents in accordance with the standards and confirm that there will be no problems during printing, such as the loss of some graphic elements or the appearance of moire. When the received materials or electronic documents do not meet the requirements of the standard, such as SWOP, or are inconsistent with the provided proofs, the printer should notify the publisher or the prepress department of inconsistencies or errors, and the printing standards cannot reach the standard of restoration. possibility.

Since printing is at the end of the production process, it is the printer's responsibility to ensure that the final printing results are satisfactory to everyone. Operators before the printing process can also produce with a certain degree of tolerance, and the printer must accurately achieve print reduction.

The application of color management technology has a great influence on the operation of the printer. We all know that color is a subjective factor and everyone deals with different colors. In the SWOP, it was mentioned that the old process system relied mainly on manual adjustment, input variables (such as film, documents, proofs, etc.) were considered to be the best control and management, the printers completed the print job task according to the instructions, and the entire production process everything is normal. But in fact, printers have the responsibility to ensure customer satisfaction, not just the number of completions. This is their responsibility. The concept of printing only by the number of prints is only suitable for printing low-end products, and commercial printing must rely on the superb craftsmanship and experience of the operator.

The printing process is so complex that it is difficult for the printer to handle all aspects. The process the printer is facing is full of uncertainties and undefined conditions and problems. They have to copy thousands of colors, and these colors will constantly change with the originals. Usually the original contains a wider color gamut, and for some customers the appearance of color is crucial. These conditions require the printer to reproduce the original in a limited printed color space and copy the colors on thousands of originals as much as possible. Picky customers place more emphasis on images and focus on the colors on the images.

In order to better identify the color of printed images, customers usually send an expert to track the printing process. These experts should have an accurate "color" eye and be able to distinguish more colors and levels of detail. Although each person's perception of color is not the same, it is impossible to reach a completely unanimous opinion, and the control of the entire printing process by these experts can greatly simplify the uncertainty of production. They verbally describe the visual changes in the printed image, not only requiring the print product to accurately match the original, but also sometimes requiring the printer to create a better image color than the original. Since no one can specifically describe how to make the image quality better, each printing operation itself is a different set of processes. This is what people usually refer to as "drawing on a printing press."

There are only a few ways printer operators can adjust color changes. In the printing process, they can increase or decrease the thickness of the ink layer. In some cases, they can also change the printing sequence, and sometimes they can adjust the viscosity of the ink. These are all rough adjustments that do not allow the appearance of subtle color changes in color, and often cause more problems than can be solved.

People usually consider the price when purchasing printed materials (inks and papers), because the printed materials occupy a considerable part of the printing cost. But the so-called one-for-one price, cheap printing supplies usually have a negative effect on color reproduction and stable printing production.

There is also a "proud" process adjustment technology, which is the expansion of outlets, also known as the tone value increases. The introduction of this concept initially provided the printer with another method of detecting the printing process. Unfortunately, people intuitively think that the ideal copy is to print 50% of the dot area as 70%-75%. Therefore, the operator of the printing press makes every effort to adjust the printing process in order to minimize the dot gain. The operator of the printing press can always make the printed image as clear as possible, which can make the size of the actual printing dot closer to that of the printing plate. The size of outlets, many people also persuaded their customers to accept this limit in quality. During this process, their printing process was pushed to the extreme, and at the same time, it brought a lot of trouble for normal printing production.

What changes will color management bring? The answer is everything. As mentioned above, the traditional printing process is very complicated, so the change is not necessarily a bad thing. At the very least, color management can be used to try to define replication quality in a measurable way and provide a better tool for customer service. On the other hand, since the printing press is the final part of the process, the printer must bear the ultimate responsibility for the qualified printed matter, so each new technology must be used with caution.

The overall concept of color management printing is to use the printer as an option for steady output, using a look-up table to match the printed color to the proof color (or other options). The key word is "stable."

The process involving color management requires that the printing press maintains consistent and consistent print colors. The printing industry has tried to define how various variables in printing affect the stable operation of the printing press. The operator always establishes some printing conditions to optimize the size of the color space, and then strives to maintain a match with the sample.