Identity Imperative: Be Consistent

Reliable Color Reproduction Around the Globe is Aided by a Proliferation of Tools and Vendor Services

By Noel Jeffrey

Color is a key building block of brand identity, so accurate representation of a company's "red" or "blue" on bottle, box, or billboard is crucial. To maintain their distinctive looks, brand owners strive for consistent color reproduction regardless of substrate or material—anywhere in the world. It has always been an enormous challenge but modern tools, including newer software and hardware systems for designers, prepress houses, and printers are making it possible to get closer than ever before.

X-Rite offers reasonably priced calibration and color management tools that are aimed at designers and are easy to use.

Steve Miller, product manager, packaging workflow at Kodak, says that all parties involved have to work together to manage variables in the process—substrates, inks, corporate colors, and the method of color management. He likens the process to baking a cake in California and New York. If you don't follow the same recipe and use the same kind of pan, you're unlikely to get an identical cake. In packaging, "You also have to decide ‘What is my tolerance?'" Miller says. "Define what is an acceptable ‘Delta E' and communicate that to suppliers."

From the beginning

Doris Brown, Pantone's vice president of Marketing, notes that her company offers a great many tools to help designers achieve consistent color. She points out that the first step in the process is to identify and select a color. Since designers can draw inspiration from nature, fabrics, art, and so on, Pantone offers a hand-held device to let them capture that color's Pantone equivalent. Pantone's Color Cue, now in version Color Cue2, contains two Pantone Libraries that enable users to cross-match any material or surface to the Pantone Matching System. It determines a color's identification and will translate that color to different values depending on color space and more. Color Cue2 began shipping in March for $349.

"Once a color is chosen, monitor calibration tools come into play," Brown says. Pantone sells the huey, an affordable (MSRP $89) easy-to-use but professional-grade calibration device developed in conjunction with GretagMacBeth for the consumer and professional market. They also offer the more sophisticated Eye-One Display LT and Eye-One Display 2 products (Package Design, January 2006).

ColorVision by Datacolor also offers a full line of monitor calibration toos, starting with their Spyder2 Express (MSRP $99). The Spyder2 PRO offers the industry's first standalone software-only printer profiling tool.

X-Rite, which recently announced the intention to acquire GretagMacBeth, also offers a reasonably priced line of calibration and color management tools aimed at designers. Steve Rankin, technical marketing manager, notes they are inexpensive and easy to use. "Color management was complicated, but now everything is moving upstream," Rankin says.

Color management has also become an integral part of standard graphic arts software applications. Rankin points out that Adobe Photoshop CS2 asks the user to embed a profile into an image when the image is opened. Brown notes that designers using Adobe's Creative Suite 2 or QuarkXPress can identify and communicate Pantone colors in that software and both offer designers the ability to work in a consistent, color-managed environment. Rankin observes: "When you ask designers what they want most in their workflow, however, a lot of them say they need to trust what they see on their monitors."

To accomplish this, there's no avoiding calibration and profiling. X-Rite offers a series of packages in its Monaco line, two of which are particularly appealing for designers just moving to color management. MonacoOPTIX ($249 list) is a solution for monitor calibration and profiling and EZcolor software ($299 list) is ICC profiling software that offers a patented technology that enables any color reflective flatbed scanner to be used as a color measurement device, avoiding the need at this stage for a spectrophotometer.

In December 2004, X-Rite released it Pulse Color Elite system ($1,000 approx.) that builds on the EZColor by integrating a spectrophotometer into the system. X-Rite's new PerfectPalette is of particular interest to the packaging community—printers and designers. Announced in February, this $499 software application builds custom Pantone and spot color libraries from existing Pantone libraries or spot measurement color values, to achieve that right spot color simulation the first time.

ColorVision's PrintFix PRO (MSRP $549) has a handheld spectrocolorimeter for a photographic quality edge with RGB printers. Designed for use with inject, dye-sub, thermal, chemical, and laser printers, PrintFix PRO's standalone software is user-friendly for customized profiling.

Proofing tools matched with spectrophotometers or spectrocolorimeters can alert users to colors that do not fall within certain limits (GMG Proof Control and ColorVision PrintFIX Pro shown here).

Moving downstream

Whether it is produced at the prepress house or at the printer's, in the end, designers depend on a contract proof to assure them that the color on their calibrated, profiled monitor is going to reproduce on press. It's where expectations are set. Kodak offers prepress and printers robust software that runs in front of the proofing device as well as device controls. In addition to its core Prinergy PowerPack workflow and plug-ins like PDF Compare and PDF Merge, the company offers several lines of contract proofing systems that perform well for packaging applications.

Kodak's Approval NX digital halftone proofer matches dot-for-dot on the substrate of choice, for accurate simulation of the final printed package. With Recipe Color software, literally millions of spot colors, including opaque whites and metallics, can be proofed without the need for specific donors. The Veris inkjet proofer is a 4-up contone device based on Kodak-developed Multi-Drop Array (TM) inkjet imaging that outputs at 1500 x 1500 dpi. It is SWOP certified, PANTONE qualified, SICOGIF (France) certified, FOGRA (Germany) certified, and PPA (UK) accredited. The company's Matchprint line includes not only the universally known analog halftone system but also the Matchprint Virtual Proofing System, a contract monitor proofing system for color-accurate monitor proofing, as well as drop-on-demand inkjet proofing.

GMG's proofing systems are also packaging market favorites. James Summers, president GMG USA, reports that its specialized FlexoProof software has been updated this year around the new Epson 4800 and 9800. "These printers use Epson's UltraChrome K3," Summers points out. "That ink behaves fundamentally differently than inks used in the past. FlexoProof now also offers Canon 6400 and 8400 series support."

Summers says that GMG's ProofControl is finding increasing acceptance in the packaging community. This software provides a color bar on each proof. Then, using GretagMacbeth's Eye-One spectrophotometer (supplied with the product), color strips are measured and the resulting values compared with the target values stored in the system. An immediate "pass/fail" is provided and, for all proofs that "pass" within defined tolerances, a self-adhesive label is automatically created on the supplied label printer. The label, which shows all of the information and values required for production, is signed or initialed by the user, who attaches it to the corresponding proof.

Summers points out that packaging printers are using this system at their production sites. If the proof is also being output at the designer's, then a "fail" at the remote site indicates errors associated with the proof printer or the proof medium, typically something as simple as the printer needing recalibration.

The color management tools of today still come back to knowing the true value of a color (with the help of Pantone's Color Bridge(TM), for instance) and knowing the relationship between printers and proofers, possibly aided by the Kodak Approval NX proofing system shown above.

Vendor resources abound

The International Color Consortium (ICC) is a group of companies working to achieve consistent color across devices. The ICC itself can be considered a vendor resource. Kodak's William Li, the new ICC chair says: "The ICC provides a place for different companies to exchange ideas about how all their products can talk to one another. It's not possible to have a real color market when one cannot talk to another. For the color business to grow, vendors have to create standards that work with everyone else's. ICC specifications used to develop profiles will continue to evolve. There's a lot of work going on now for digital photography and motion pictures."

It bears repeating that ICC profile success requires a calibrated and profiled monitor. However, in addition to self-installed color managed workflows, today's brand owners and their designers have significant resources available for color control from packaging industry vendors. PolyOne and Sun Chemical provide examples.

PolyOne is the world's largest polymer service company. Among its divisions, PolyOne's Color and Additives Masterbatches Group is a one-stop source of colorants, color and additive systems, additive products, and color technology and support services.

PolyOne's Larry Nitardy, group manager, and Pete Prusak, director of technology, explain that they work with customers to develop colorants for their plastic packages that are brand accurate. "Fundamentally, color can be described by a light reflectance reading, that is an integrated reading from a spectrophotometer," Prusak says. "Each color has a fingerprint. If we know it, then we can match accordingly whether the substrate is paper or plastic. Pigments do not always have the same reflective values on different surfaces, but we can get very close. Numerically it may not be the same, and it may take a couple of iterations to satisfy the customer. The best way to measure is from plastic to plastic but we have used everything from wallpaper to fabric."

Monitor calibration tools like these from Pantone/Gretag Macbeth and ColorVision are very important tools when the realities of color verfication require remote printer profiling systems.

Nitardy explains that for their customers, in addition to color, time to market is critical. Therefore the company has a design center where customers can come in and describe an objective and leave the same day with a prototype. He also notes that to speed time to market they can search through previously developed colors or use a proprietary software program to vary core pigments for a custom color.

"Designers can also use our online catalog of hues to get a start on restaging a branded product or designing a new one from scratch," Nitardy says. "That will give them an idea of the cost. The advantage to this is speed." He also asserts that their colorants can be made anywhere in the world. Prusak points out that they have a qualified list of raw materials so that pigments in Paris, Shanghai or Chicago can match.

Inks by the numbers

Sun Chemical, with global headquarters in Parsippany, NJ, is the world's largest producer of water, solvent, UV, and EB curable packaging inks. "Historically, people think of us as the ink guys," says Ian Trevor Pike, business leader, Brand Color Management for Sun Chemical, "but we want to make sure the colors are right before we make the ink. Our group helps brand owners and service providers realize full value of their brands through workflow."

Pike explains that his Brand Color Management Group attempts to fill in the gaps—opportunities for miscommunication among parties in the workflow. He describes its services as a pyramid, with the color standards trademark as the wide base. As reported last year in "Color by the Numbers" (Package Design, April 2005), Sun works with a company's signature colors to develop physical color standards produced on the actual packaging substrates. These are very different from Pantone color guides and swatches. In-house designers work from these color targets. Press operators around the world can run to the numbers. Sun also offers software tools that will permit remote inkjet printers to output the actual colors.

Moving higher on the pyramid, Pike says that his group works with brand owners to evaluate colors before they specify them using software tools the company has developed. "Sometimes we can help companies eliminate extra colors," Pike says. "For example a company may have specified 15 yellows, and through what we call ‘palette rationalization,' we can help them decide on three."

Previewing digital colors is another level of Sun's pyramid of services. Built in partnership with other vendors, the process takes a final printed product with accurate brand color applied and from that develops a digitally accurate color, which can be printed out on a calibrated inkjet proofing device. Pike explains that these printouts allow designers to test colors applied to various parts of the design, for example how the corporate blue would look with yellow versus white. "We can recreate 98% of the uncoated Pantone library within commercial tolerance for paperboard applications," says Pike.

Sun also helps customers choose a brand color that's obtainable across substrates. Pike points out that a brand red may have to be consistent on boxes and cans in the boxes, polyurethane labels, PET bottles, signage, and more. Sun helps the customer choose a truly "representative red" and then develops a spectral identity of that red which gives its color value. By applying a different formula depending on process and substrate, suppliers can then reproduce the desired appearance. "The end game is consistency," Pike concludes.

MORE RESOURCES

For more information on organizations setting standards for global color controls, visit these websites:

• www.color.org
• www.colormanagement.com
• www.gracol.org
• www.printingacrossborders.org

For more information on companies active in color reliability, visit these websites:

• ColorVision - www.colorvision.com
• Colorviz - www.colorviz.com (Indigo software)
• GMG - www.gmgcolor.com
• Kodak - www.kodak.com; www.graphics.kodak.com
• Match My Color - www.matchmycolor.com
• Pantone - www.pantone.com
• PolyOne - www.polyone.com
• Sun Chemical - www.sunchemical.com
• X-Rite - www.xrite.com