– Jim Raffel was interviewed by RIT Grad Student Adam Dewitz. Adam’s blog is also a growing resource of Printing Industry information. Check out the interview and Adam’s blog at: printmode.net
Archive for December, 2005
*** Golden Nugget #21: The Reality of Remote Color Diagnostics ***
While at the PIA/GATF Color Management Conference earlier this month I had a chance to visit with a customer who uses our new ProofPass.com proof certification and remote color diagnostics solution. Our customer is responsible for the operations of a large pre-press facility and for this article we will call him John Smith.
Recently John was out of the office at a user’s group conference for another piece of critical equipment or software in his facility. John got a frantic call from the office that recently produced proofs could not be matched on press. John’s first concern was to check on the current state of his inkjet proofing system. He asked that a new proof be made and scanned into the ProofPass.com database.
Because the ProofPass.com database is internet based, John was able to login to the ProofPass.com web-site with his account information and see the color of the swatches just measured along with almost every print metric a person could wish for. The visual swatches in ProofPass.com proved to be the key to solving this problem. Before John even started looking at the delta E numbers he could see that the side-by-side color comparison of the reference proof (gold standard) and the recently produced proof did not match.
Obviously doing this comparison on a color calibrated monitor in proper viewing conditions aids in the correctness of the colors being viewed. Remember, however, that ProofPass.com is not intended to display “contract color” but instead to provide the user a visual reference of the relative color difference between two color swatches.
The shift observed was quite large, and in the overall direction of a much “warmer” proof. While almost every swatch passed the delta E test in place (I believe John has since tightened his delta E tolerances) it was this overall shift vs a single patch shifting that was causing the problem. John runs a simple device next to the inkjet proofer that plots both temperature and humidity over time. In the period of time that the color problem had occurred humidity had dropped from about 60% to 20%.
In conclusion, remote color is clearly the most exciting technology to hit our industry in many years. While we have all seen the potential of remote “soft proofing” I believe the broader category of remote color is going to provide much of the excitement and growth in our industry over the next five years. It promises to be a heck of a ride, so climb aboard and let’s see where it takes us.
I was speaking with a new customer last week and he shared with me how he has been using ColorMetrix software to monitor his pressroom. His goal is to get his proofs to match his press sheets. This customer has a 54” not so new printing press and he is using ColorMetrix to monitor print quality all the way across the sheet.
Now, I know the seasoned ColorMetrix veterans are saying that this guy may have bitten off more than he can chew. Let’s face it measuring a 54” color bar one patch at a time with a hand-held instrument is not my idea of fun. But then he finished the thought and light bulb went off for me. He is only going to do this exhaustive measuring for a short period of time. His goal is to identify the channel (ColorMetrix can break the 54” cross sheet dimension into 6 channels or zones) prints the worst. He will then monitor only this trouble zone on a day-to-day basis, and the rest of the sheet on a less frequent basis.
Is this ideal or perfect? No, but neither is measuring by hand across that sheet size everyday. So, given the choice of not measuring, or concentrating on the known problem area I am going with the later.
The unstated goal here is to prove the value of measurement to senior management. I have no doubt the improvements in productivity and profitability this constant and consistent measurement have will not go unnoticed. Then, my new customer can requisition a 30-40 thousand dollar automated scanning device, and begin to measure the entire sheet on every job.
In conclusion, sometimes writing a short e-mail nugget is good enough. After all, I am in Phoenix, it is Friday night at 5:54pm, and it’s time for dinner!
Keep an eye out for possible updates at www.JimRaffel.com while I am at the Color Management Conference. I plan to get a few camera phone pictures up as early as Sunday. I will also post anything I find newsworthy during the conference.