Manage your colour and grow your business. You’ve heard the message before. The industry is evolving, we are told, and the principles of ‘trust-me’ craftsmanship that underpin customer relationships are yielding to a harder edged culture. The rulebook is on the table, and results must be measurable.
The Lithographic Institute of Australia has joined with the Printing Industries Association of Australia to develop a website that meets this market need. The ColourStandards website relies on the colour prowess of the Australian ISO TC 130 committee, which sets the regulatory framework for colour standards.
The site was launched three years ago but given an overhaul only recently. The biggest change is one that the associations have dubbed “a world first” – it lists all the ISO colour compliant printers in Australia. There are currently 42 names, and they read like a who’s who of some of the industry’s biggest overachievers, from the likes of Hannanprint, Offset Alpine Printing, Focus Press and SOS Print & Media (who all paid for a premium listing) to plenty of smaller players who are no less innovative or impactful. Many of the printers crossing the stage at last month’s National Print Awards are here. But all this fuss over colour is only worthwhile if it translates into business for the printers who have made the effort. So are print buyers taking notice?
The short answer is yes, at least in some cases. When James Rogers moved down from Brisbane to join advertising agency Leo Burnett, he was suddenly without his go-to list of print suppliers. “Having moved from a market I knew well to Sydney when I hadn’t used a lot of Sydney printers, the main thing I was concerned about was ISO 12647. That was a big thing for me.”
Rogers knows his colour management: he has installed proofing systems at two separate agencies. So the ISO badge offered a sense of security when he didn’t have pre-existing relationships to rely on. But beyond that situation, Rogers is typical of many customers when
he says he would rate prior experience over a third-party certificate. “Placards never meant that much to me.”
He will put his faith in technology, saying that one of his preferred suppliers runs a Manroland press with inline spectro. “I know it is a brand new machine and if there is proof in the pudding, I tend to lean more toward them.”
Paul Clark is creative director of Sydney agency Alphabet Studio, whose clients include the Sydney Opera House, Belvoir Street Theatre, Bangarra Dance Theatre and Musica Viva. Clark says that while creatives have become conscious of the ISO 14001 environmental standard, there’s scant knowledge of ISO 12647 in the design community.
Moreover, Alphabet’s clients generally are not specifying ISO colour compliance, and Clark finds adjustments can be made during press checks. So nothing has changed? He points out that gone are the days when Cromalin proofing nailed colour, but reckons that with digital and soft proofing nowadays, the best stage to guarantee precise colour is when the work is hot off the press.
“In terms of a corporate colour, we’d probably get it proofed as close as we can to the PMS. If there’s a specified PMS, either in a four-colour job or as a fifth colour, we’ll definitely check it on press.”
While he can see an argument for brand conscious clients demanding ISO 12647, and expects this trend to increase, Clark is a fan of relationship printing and says accurate colour is more than documentation. It is about having confidence in the printer. “We have four or five printers we call on according to the scope of the job, and there’s probably two we use more.”
Magazine publishers are some of the most demanding clients (as we at ProPrint are well aware). There is a specific colour standard formulated for Australian printing companies working in publishing environments: Distribution of Digital Data files to Australian Publishers (known as 3DAP). The 3DAP committee has the endorsement of the Magazine Publishers of Australia, and includes representatives from major publishers, printers and pre-press companies.
The 3DAP platform, a subset of ISO 12647-2, is gaining acceptance among Australian printers working for this market. The committee has adopted the Australian version of ISO 12647-2 and the ISO 12647-7 proofing standard. In version 3 of the standard, 3DAP recommends separation profiles to suit final printing requirements. 3DAP control strips are available only to approved 3DAP proofing systems and must indicate the proofing vendor’s name and logo, the RIP, the proofing device and the proof originator’s company name and logo.
Publishing giant News Magazines now only accepts the 3DAP proofing process and incorporates the ISO 12647-7 tolerances for proofing quality control. Specialist publisher Yaffa Publishing states on its rate card that it “will only be responsible for accurate colour reproduction of a digital file if a colour digital proof is supplied in accordance with 3DAP guidelines” and links its customers to the 3DAP website.
Troy Stevens, production director at specialist publisher Reed Business Information (RBI), expects printers to have colour certification. The publisher’s relationships with a select group of printers are stable and long-term, so colour is an issue that has already been dealt with. Suppliers understand RBI’s needs. Stevens tells ProPrint the challenge is greater with third-party work, where printers tender for individual contracts.
One guy who knows colour inside and out is Yves Roussange, managing director of colour consultancy ColourProcess. The firm offers printers Production Standards Offset (PSO) certification to ISO 12647, through German standards body Fogra (Forschungsgesellschaft für Druck- und Reproduktionstechnik).
But Roussange, who has some 30 agencies of varying size in his client base, says experience in Germany has shown that PSO awareness “doesn’t come from the printer, but the print buyer”. It is an attitude shared in Australia, where even printers who have attained PSO prefer to sit pat, rather than actively promote their certificate to agencies. “As long as print buyers don’t push printers to use this or that process, it’s a lost cause,” he says.
That said, educating buyers, at least of digital print, made an advance in April, when ColourProcess launched its PSO-Check software, a device-independent compliance tool that enables printers to match ISO-coated-v2 to a draft of the new digital standard, ISO 15311-2. Roussange, a member of Fogra’s digital working group, is involved in drafting ISO 15311-2, due for final release in three years.
The implementation software comprises three steps to print to the standard: LAB evaluation of primary colours; dot-gain evaluation, and quality maintenance through a control strip. Ten printers in Australia have reported improved results on beta-testing, using various output technologies. The first Australian customer will start using
PSO-Check this month.
Jason Hall, managing director of CMYKit, a Sydney pre-press colour specialist, detects a growing discernment upstream. Buyers of print, whether agencies, brokers or publishers, “are becoming more educated, because they’re required to be”, he says.
The most stringent buyers are the print managers, which are now regularly demanding ISO certification. “Some of our customers tell us they’re constantly being asked whether they print to the ISO and whether they have PSO,” says Hall.
CMYKit works with Ugra (the Swiss Centre of Competence for Media and Print Technology), applying its PSO certification to ISO 12647-2. In a market where Fogra has mindshare, Ugra has made some headway, especially since GASAA endorsed it.
Hall has just completed certifying Sydney business Focus Press. The company runs a mix of A1 and A2 litho and digital work on its Komori Lithrones and colour and mono Canon ImageRunners. Its certification is for printing on gloss, offset and satin stocks.
He rejects the “horses for courses” outlook that says ISO certification is needed for some jobs but not others. “It benefits every printer by increasing productivity through reduced wastage and makeready times, which in turn means lower electricity and wages bills, and new jobs on the press, instead of do-overs.”
Increasingly, print companies will need to “print to numbers, not just to proofs”, he says. Focus Press performed this exercise in preparation for its certification. “We asked them to print without visually assessing the proof. Creatives are increasingly expecting their artwork PDFs to be printed exactly. Printers and their clients are not quite speaking a common language yet, tolerances are a little wide, but overall the momentum is building.”
DES managing director Ian Clare sees a mixed level of awareness among buyers ordering CMYK jobs. Outside of publishing, “some understand the ISO acronym and some understand the idea. Ad agencies, design agencies and publishers always want the colour to be right for their client. Once it is explained to them that ISO 12647 enables consistency of colour across print processes and print sites, globally, they get it.”
Garry Muratore, area sales manager for GMG in Oceania, believes printers and buyers are increasingly viewing colour certification as coin of the realm. He views certified process control as an advantage to any printer, regardless of its markets, and says once such consistencies are established in the workflow, there is no need ‘to switch them on or off’, as it were, for different calibres of work.
“I am certain that any reputable print buyer will care about quality, no matter what the market application. For brand owners, this is critical as. For example, Coca-Cola red has to look the same whether it is produced as a four-colour process print or a single colour special. ISO 12647 should be seen as an investment in process control across the entire print production enterprise. It could never be considered a waste of time or money,” says Muratore.
But he stresses that it is up to printers to market this prized asset to agencies and publishers. “Like any product or service a printer offers, certification needs to be marketed correctly. Having the sales force understand the process and its results means a clear benefit can be communicated.”
Case study: Certified printers
SOS Print & Media made the marketing decision to become a premium partner in the ColourStandards programme, says director Michael Schulz. He sees ISO compliance as a template for uniformity across multiple print sites on distribute-and-print contracts. One major corporate account asked for ISO on a catalogue contract.
SOS has closed-loop printing on its 10-colour Akiyama JPrint perfector, which means it can calibrate colour values from the CIP4 pre-press data, to the inks, to the press set-up. It also has ink optimisation software, which creates measurable colour by ripping CMYK files prior to proofing. It employs what used to be called ‘grey component replacement’ during drum scanning, maximising blacks and minimising process colours.
Bambra Press also appears on the ColourStandards site. Managing director John Wanless says the company underwent Fogra PSO certification to ISO 12647-2 and 12647-7 via Heidelberg, though adds “we did it for ourselves, in many ways. Our first priority was to be sure we were happy with our colour space. The ISO was a by-product. Our customers, in many ways, really don’t care about ISO, as long as their colour is right.
“We have fussy customers and we want to know, in the first instance, that we’re right, our colour is right, and then go as close as we can to a 100% match of the proof.”
Jagar Sprinting in Sydney got a world first when it secured PSO to ISO 12647 for its Xerox iGen4 last year, using the services of CMYKit. The Sydney CBD print company, a ColourStandards partner, has many corporates among its clientele, says joint director Bruce Jacobs.
The need for ISO compliance arises when it is asked to print digital work to match ISO-compliant offset printing, such as for a short run of IPOs and prospectuses ahead of the main run. The same applies for retail sector work. “It’s usually when clients are complying with their internal branding guidelines.”
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter