Color Management for Wide-Format Printing

For the wide-format and signage segment of the print industry, color management has come a long way. When the technology was brand new and the quality was … questionable at times. Color management was the last thing on anyone’s mind. Getting “close enough” was often the goal and ensuring color matched between banners, billboards, and the marketing materials being produced on analog presses wasn’t a primary consideration.

But that has all changed.

The quality of wide-format inkjet devices has come a long way. Now being just as good as offset, the color gamut is impressively large, and it has the ability to achieve the same color across multiple machines with repeatability. This means wide-format and signage has now entered the age of reliable color.

Color management for wide-format and signage applications is no longer an afterthought. In fact, just like with other print technologies and applications, it has quickly become an expected part of the process. As that happens, there are a few factors to keep an eye on to ensure your operation stays ahead of the curve and provides the products your clients expect.

1. Shifting Definitions

One of the trends Ray Weiss, vice president, eLearning and certifications at PRINTING United Alliance, is watching is the shift in how spot colors are measured and tracked.

“More and more, the conversation is moving from the old l*a*b* definition of spot colors to a spectral definition,” he notes. “This conversation has been going on for the last few years; however, I’m seeing more examples of where it is being implemented. I’ll look at some of the new RIP software releases at PRINTING United Expo to see which vendors are taking advantage of this. The reason it’s important is that most PSPs print spot colors on multi-colored substrates, and frequently, the spot color is a tint (less than 100% value), which means they need to account for the impact of this substrate on the spot color. This has been known for quite some time, but with more RIP software, we’ll see an improvement in this area.”

He notes that as using spectral data becomes more widespread, there will be more ways to communicate and use it across all print platforms, making it easier to manage and track, and easier to implement over time.

2. Automation, automation, automation.

Jordan Gorski, Idealliance’s executive director, says one of the biggest trends he’s watching now is the same one impacting nearly every aspect of the print industry: automation.

“Automation and creativity are the two big things across print right now, I see,” he notes. “Especially leveraging wide-format and signage, what is able to be printed is astounding these days, and leveraging those capabilities to create new applications, whether its signage, architectural graphics. What you can print on these days is endless.”

Gorski continues, “Getting color right when you’re doing all of this, though, is the critical piece. An example that comes to mind is the architectural graphics that mimic other materials, either organic or nonorganic. If the color is wrong, it’s pretty obvious it’s a replication — and a poor one at that — which is going to affect the viewer, skew the message or environment, and draw away from the experience. Inconsistency is also a big factor. If you’re doing a huge wall graphic, and one section doesn’t match the next — due to a clogged ink head, substrate inconsistency, or whatever the issue may be — you’re not going to know about it until it’s too late. Hopefully that’s before your customer sees it, but if they bring it to your attention, that’s going to be a costly mistake and will impact future business. Staying ahead of the curve and maintaining processes is the key to good print, over and over again.”

In other words, you can’t just print a panel, banner, or other application and call it done. Often, today’s wide-format and signage applications are part of an installation where many different types of print must work together to create the final experience. And if wide-format color doesn’t match the rest, it will stand out — and not in a good way.

While getting the color right across all those technologies and applications can be done by hand, it would be time consuming and rely on the expertise of just one or two people, hoping their “eye” for color is good enough. Automated color management takes the guess work out of the process, ensuring your wide-format presses are on the same proverbial wavelength as the rest of the project.

3. Measurement is critical.

Weiss notes another big trend he is seeing in wide-format color management: a shift in the tools being used to measure color in the first place.

“[There] is a wider push to use smaller hand-held spectrophotometers for measuring and verifying color,” Weiss notes. “By smaller hand-held, I mean the NIX Spectro L or Datacolor ColorReader Spectro. These devices connect to a phone with an app or a laptop, and verifying color at the printer is much easier.”

Print jobs don’t happen in a vacuum. The ability to not only measure color but access those measurements and make use of them on the fly whenever necessary, is quickly becoming a key part of the process. This also ties back to the push for automation. If color management is being handled through a mostly automated process, making sure the system is doing what it is supposed to will ensure every piece is perfect when it goes out your door.

Making Sense of Trends

All three of these trends can seem overwhelming at first glance, especially for a wide-format and signage producer who might not have bothered much with color management in the past. But don’t be intimidated or think you have to go all-in from the outset.

Gorski notes, “Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet. Learn. Communicate with your customers to see how you can leverage what you have available in house, can expand on, or invest in to make your day to day better, easier, and more enjoyable. Where are your pain points? Is there a new tool or speciation you can leverage to solve that?”

For Weiss, it starts with reaching out to your current OEMs. “They should ask their RIP manufacturer if or when spectral definitions for spot colors will be available in the RIP,” he says. “And I would look into these smaller spectrophotometers to have press-side for color matching and/or verification during printing. The number one complaint I hear from printers is about color changing from run to run, or over a long run. The challenge is that our eyes adapt to tiny variations in color, and by the time our eye detects a color shift, a device will have detected it long before, saving them quite a bit of money in reprints.”

Another step wide-format and signage printers can take is training.

“Color management training, offered by PRINTING United Alliance especially, continues to grow. Idealliance set the landscape with its leading Color Management Professional program and is now part of PRINTING United Alliance. These courses continue to be fine-tuned, expanded to additional segments, like wide-format, direct-to-garment, and other necessary print markets where critical color drives success,” Gorski says. “[We are] also updating our color management course focusing on creative workflows and prepress, to make sure all parts of the print supply chain have the education necessary to be successful in their roles. The G7+ program, for leading industry experts, builds off this, and the new G7+ training and certification provides that higher level of learning and proficiency to really take control of print, graphic, and packaging supply chains for consistent color everywhere, leveraging the success of G7 and G7+.”

Weiss also notes that online training has proven to be a popular format for printers looking to improve their color management skills. He says, “Online training has taken off with very good results. For many shops, time away from the shop is very difficult. However, not having a trained staff is even more problematic. Online training is a great way to get your staff up to speed on most basic color management functions and gives them tools to solve problems when they arise.”

And, speaking of G7+, the new standard is still in its early stages, but both Weiss and Gorski have strong expectations for what it will do for the wide-format and signage space in particular.

Gorski notes, “G7+ will really benefit inkjet printers like wide-format/signage printers leveraging high color, highly saturated output. G7+ incorporates high-density smoothing, which compensates for a device’s ability to produce a fine, high density gradient and shadows, making that output as visually appealing as possible, while leveraging the principles of G7 for near neutral output through modern gray balance and tonality for the consistent output brands and print buyers expect, not only with graphic output, but also packaging, commercial print, publications, labels, you name it. If a device is printing with CMYK, G7+ can ensure that output is neutral, and thus consistent across production, either job to job, shift to shift, day to day, year to year, and shop to shop, delivering visually appealing printed product regardless of when, where, and how it’s printed.”

Weiss agrees, saying, “Some of the benefits of the new G7+ are smoother tonality in highly saturated colors when printing with a high-density inkjet printer (especially those using six or more inks) and better gray balance when using SCCA (substrate-corrected colorimetric aims) for colored substrates.”

Putting it All Together

So, how do you take all this and turn it into actionable items? Here are a few things Gorski and Weiss recommend:

First, implement process control into your production now if you haven’t already. Don’t assume a print is good, know a print is good. This will help prevent remakes.

Regular, scheduled printer maintenance — from nozzle checks to cleaning and even printing a color test print to verify nothing has changed — will get a production shift off to a good start. And, to make sure this occurs, schedule it just like you would schedule a job. It doesn’t have to take long to complete this task, but if it’s not “on the schedule,” it will be easily overlooked — until it takes a bite out of one of your jobs.

Ensure color settings in the creative applications are properly set. Too many creatives rely on the default color settings in these applications — settings that are more than 20 years old. Current printer technology can print many more colors than these old settings allow (such as sRGB or SWOP), causing a printer to throw away color right out of the gate. And if you aren’t the originator of the art, talk to your customers about these settings. It’s a great opportunity to bring value to a customer by being an expert or a consultant, not just an order taker.

Educate yourself and your customers to maximize your investment. Certification offered by PRINTING United Alliance and Idealliance, through G7 Master Qualification, allows printers to demonstrate their capabilities, and opens access to the most demanding brands and print buyers, who often require G7-based print production.

In the end, Weiss says it all comes back to that training and education push. “Train your staff — from sales to customer service, prepress and creatives, and printers in color. From the language they should be using to new solutions, too. Don’t trust that anyone knows everything they could know — train and test them. Most of us in this industry are self-taught; we’ve learned from someone who learned from someone and think we’ve got it all figured out until we realize we don’t. Many of your competitors are using these resources to become better printers — why aren’t you?”

“Don’t be complacent,” Gorski adds. “Print technology is growing in leaps and bounds with capabilities across software, hardware, machine learning and AI, process control tools, and so much more. Take advantage of what you can to optimize your work. Your clients will thank you, your staff will thank you, and you’ll see it in your bottom line as print production becomes more profitable and your business grows.”