Spot color to dot

Improved spot color ink printing performance provides a viable alternative for digital halftone proofing of packaging printing.

Today's packaged trademarks tend to predetermine the characteristics of the product and convey the product's information. This requires the use of color and spot colors in the packaging proofs. This has always been a conflict between digital half-tone proofing technology and packaging printing. . However, with the study of new technologies, suppliers continue to provide new materials for the packaging market, and half-tone proofing technology has made great progress.

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Usually, suppliers sell more products to production companies than to printers. Mark Vanover, CreoScitex’s marketing manager, pointed out in particular that the company’s sales operations are to a certain extent determined by trading companies and prepress service providers. Similarly, Ken Theodos, product manager at Kodak Polychrome Graphics, said that more than 90% of the company’s systems used in the packaging industry are prepress.

Why is there such a big gap? Perhaps printers have become accustomed to producing packaging products that do not produce good performance. Don Schroeder, senior color proofing product development manager at Fuji Graphic Systems Division, believes that “the current problem is that the device cannot accurately simulate or create PMS spot colors.”

Driven by the interests of the packaging market, suppliers are actively seeking ways to solve problems. In the past year or two, Fuji has been actively exploring the use of Pantone inks to create a color library for FINALPROOF halftone devices to meet the standard Pantone PMS model.

CreoScitex encountered spot color problems when using the company's Color Combiner packaging software in the Prinergy DFE workflow. Vanover believes that if used in conjunction with Proofsetter Spectrum, the software can display special color effects on AM screens through FM spot colors. Users can get better spot colors through this technology, and also maintain the unity of the screen angle and overprint information.

For Approval XP System, Kodak exhibited Recipe Color technology at drupa 2000. This software can define and create millions of spot colors without additional raw materials.

Color fidelity Proponents of digital halftone proofing often use inspection capabilities as the main advantage of digital proofing. Since the CMYK four-color ink setting can be perfectly matched with the printer's printing primary colors, color control is relatively easy. Speaking of the advantages of digital half-tone proofing, Mr. William DeMarco of Kodak’s Worldwide Product Line Manager (Global Product Line Manager) believes that “other technologies handle images with four-dimensional lookup table interpolation algorithms and cannot accurately verify proofs.”

DeMarco also recognizes the importance of the same structure in Zhang’s outlets. By viewing the color proofs with a magnifying glass, the viewer can instruct the prepress operator how to adjust the dot area of ​​the special tone ladder. Correct communication can reduce the number of proofs.

Some packaging printers may argue that the key to proofs is the fidelity of color, not the dot structure. Mr. Vanover thinks, "If you can take two points at the same time, why should you give up one? The printers will find that large-format digital dot proofing can achieve satisfactory color fidelity and network structure at the same time."

Mr. Kevin Hooper, Marketing Communications Manager at Polaroid Graphics Imaging, insists that the fidelity of color is directly linked to the dot structure. Non-network proofs are just simulations and cannot accurately represent the printing effect of a printing press.

The reliability of halftone systems is constantly improving, and packaging printers also ensure that product quality will increase steadily. Mr. Schroeder revealed that Fuji is testing four new printing primaries for the FINALPROOF system, which are red, blue, green and orange, and are currently undergoing improvement. Polaroid recently introduced SpotOn software for spot color separation proofing using CMYK inks on the company's PolaProof and Prediction halftone devices. In order to make better use of Color Combiner software, CreoScitex plans to use the software for other DFEs so that any workflow can benefit.

Remote Control In order to reasonably complement hard proofing, both the traditional proofing service providers and relatively new professional companies are researching remote proofing solutions. Sometimes they will cooperate: Recently, Imation and RealTimeProof launched their jointly developed product, MatchPrint Virtual, and wanted to produce high quality proofs of MatchPrint on the display.

The RealTimeProof product developed by RealTimeImage's parent company enables the same participants in the same company to preview and confirm proofs through the Internet at the same time. Chris Gulker believes that the component can support image formats in normal packaging as well as custom colors and metallic colors.

Gulker pointed out that its most important use is realizability. "ASP allows users to start operations immediately, without investment, without maintenance, and without software and hardware."

Software developer Group Logic provides the print media industry with two remote proofing products: MassTransit Enterprise for mechanical proofing at remote locations in the customer's location, and soft proofing software that allows customers and printers to see and comment proofs at the same time Imagexpo. Mr Andy Lewis, marketing and sales manager at Group Logic VP, said that many customers have found that software-based solutions are more effective than ASP. For those who prefer the ASP, Group Logic recommends installing the customer service version of the MassTransit software.