Software sharing in cyberspace, or in popular jargon, ‘cloud’ computing, had its genesis in consumer electronics, with Apple introducing iCloud dropboxes for iPhone and iPad. In essence, the Wikipedia definition of cloud software sums it up: “End users access cloud-based applications through a web browser or a lightweight desktop or mobile app, while the software and data are stored on servers at a remote location.”
The business-to-business world has been quick to see the upsides of tablet-driven remote software sharing, and the evolution of the ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) phenomenon. It offers a screen experience identical to software installed on the client’s in-house servers but in a business model where the user pays only for the time used. Think of it as time-shared software.
At the vendor level, SaaS has moved like wildfire. It is well established in web-to-print (W2P) and management inform-ation systems (MIS). Last month, ProPrint looked at the onset of cloud-based file management, such as for preflighting.
With ordering, production analysis and pre-press already being won over by SaaS, it was only a matter of time before a more complex space like colour management followed suit. We didn’t have long to wait, with some significant releases at Drupa.
Cloud compliance
In Germany, Fujifilm unveiled XMF ColorPath, a cloud-based colour manage-ment system to calibrate and maintain compliance to printing standards, such as ISO 12647-2. The system works across multiple processes, including offset, digital and screen, helping printers maintain colour consistency.
Matt Ritson, Fujifilm Australia’s marketing manager, says ColorPath comprises two main components. The first is XMF ColorPath Organizer – a set of colour management configuration
tools within XMF Workflow v5. This module manages application of colour profiles.
The second is XMF ColorPath Sync, a cloud-based colour management system for managing colour to the ISO 12647-2 standard across different print devices. It creates device-linked ICC profiles and ISO TVI curves so printers can quickly achieve ISO 12647-2 conformity across a range of print devices.
“The solution is all managed via a web browser, with even the spectrophotometers plugged directly into the web browser, so there is no software client to install,” says Ritson.
In addition to creating device link profiles to match ISO 12647-2, XMF ColorPath Sync checks compliance to the standard, and when conditions such as variations in humidity or media stock cause devices to drift out of compliance, XMF ColorPath Sync will create on-the-fly colour corrections to realign the colour output to the standard.
FFEI, a former unit of Fujifilm and now one of its pre-press business partners, released RealPro Colour Cloud, available on a pay-as-you-go basis. It provides profiling tools for workflow users to control colour centrally across devices. It enables ink-optimised device link profiles to be purchased online as required, downloaded and used within FFEI’s RealPro Workflow System, as part of a standardised PDF/JDF workflow.
Nick Gilmore, FFEI’s software business manager, makes the business case for cloud-based colour management. He says SaaS is ideal for infrequently used products, such as device-link profiling. “SaaS allows you to pay for your software while it’s earning you income. Subscrib-ing, instead of purchasing, requires less capital and keeps it off your balance sheet, as software costs are treated as operating expenses, not capital expenses.
“Within the cloud, you are selling data as a consumable rather than physical software. There are no start-up costs or support costs and so the final price significantly reduces the cost of profiling for the end user.”
At Drupa, GMG Color announced CoZone, a comprehensive cloud solution for professional media and colour management users that, according to Garry Muratore, GMG’s Oceania marketing manager, will redefine how colour management is used in the future.
“We hope to make the first version available later in the year. We see CoZone being applicable to all industry sectors that need to work remotely with clients who want to increase the quality, speed and frequency of the approval cycle. This means not only packaging but also commercial print and wide format print markets.”
Being cloud-based means the system is easily and affordably scalable, he says.
Way of the future
He sees cloud-based colour management as the way of the future. “The client has all the essential advantages that come from soft proofing with many additional multi-media functions. This allows for a streamlined review and approval process and can integrate into GMG’s already renowned hard-copy proofing.
“The customer can easily apply GMG’s colour management without the need for expert knowledge. As cloud-based technology is very much a collaborative process, users can manage and share profiles centrally, moreover cloud is convenient, taking colour-critical issues off the client’s shoulders.”
Another Drupa launch came from Pantone, which released PantoneLive for the package printing sector. The system was developed in partnership with Esko and Sun Chemical. It enables all phases of the packaging design process to access common digital colour definitions and aims to reduce complexity and re-work.
It uses Esko’s Colour Engine database to manage colour and device profiles and to support the colour management process across the packaging pre-press workflow.
The new tool features a standard library, which includes all of the colours from Pantone Plus and the Pantone Matching System.
Brand owners will be able to create specific colour palettes and store them in the system. They will be able to use the digital library to identify colour specifications based on substrates, print processes, inks and application methods.
The tool will be commercially available from 15 June. Overseas companies that have trialled the system include Heinz, which wanted to standardise the colour of its Heinz Beans packaging across all of the substrates it uses, and consumer packaging manufacturer Chesapeake, which said it managed to reduce colour variation by 84% on one job, leading to zero rejections from the print run.
As stated earlier, SaaS and the cloud are becoming favourites in vendor jargon – but how far are we from seeing these tools in Australian colour management?
Buzzword bandwagon
Judging from discussions with printers and pre-press resellers, most of the coalface is still racing to catch up with vendors, and there is an air of scepticism about benefits beyond multi-site mega-operations.
Colour Graphic Services (CGS) director David Crowther wants print businesses to be careful in defining what they seek from SaaS-based colour management and not become mesmerised by the cloud bandwagon.
End-users, suppliers and printing companies have been sharing files from client server-resident software for more than 20 years now, and Crowther says printers should be wary of any vendors who describe processes such as these as ‘cloud-based’.
“I think we would need to be careful about a product being from the cloud or as a cloud computing product or service, just because we’re told [it is]. The word ‘cloud’ seems to carry a lot of weight these days, being more marketing hype than truth. In the end, I work with various suppliers who offer file sharing and remote data services and if we call it ‘cloud’, everyone is interested.”
What do printers think?
Printers in Australia see cloud colour management largely as a multi-site technology. Haydn Breheny, director of Melbourne sheetfed digital commercial business Ego Print, is philosophical. He sees managing and measuring “almost from home” as benefiting pre-press managers at hub-style operations.
“Where a client prints at multiple sites and needs corporate colours printed accurately, perhaps part of it here and part of it offshore, that’s where it applies,” he said.
Ego, which is based in Mount Waverley and has around 50 staff, uses Mellow Colour’s InkSpec, which is a module of PrintSpec. The tool calibrates ink and other parameters for a key client needing to match output to offshore-printed work. The implementation of ISO 12647-2 at the company was performed by CGS late last year.
Mellow Colour, offered locally by Colour Graphic Services (CGS), developed InkSpec for print buyers, colour separators and printers requiring consistent, and standardised colour appearance conforming to ISO 12647. PrintSpec breaks with traditional proof matching to the press, or press to proof, by independently comparing both to pre-defined ISO targets for various printing conditions. InkSpec matches special and spot colours to customer defined or library specifications, performing quality controls.
Breheny sees these calibrations transferred to a shared-software concept as significantly, perhaps hazardously altering the relationship between stakeholders.
It empowers clients or advertising agencies to manage colour from their screens, with skill sets not on a par with a printer’s. Moreover, he believes it will be some time before customer-managed colour becomes commonplace in Australia.
Antoine Jacob is pre-press manager at 14-year-old trade business Whirlwind Print, which is at the forefront of web-to-print, with an ordering portal based on Kodak Storefront. He is upbeat about cloud colour control, yet hesitant about when the multi-state company might take that route.
“The cloud concept is fantastic and I have no doubt that Kodak will not be too far away from launching their own system. They currently have colour management that can be performed on different devices, but it is not on-the-fly nor in the cloud.
“I guess the holy grail for us would be to have a colour engine linked to Metrix so we could then have size, quantity and colour pre-imposed and viewed by exception rather than rule,” adds Jacob.
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