Champions of ISO 12647

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For the last ten years or so, we’ve been on a rather twisty and slightly uphill path towards standardisation in print manufacturing. The process hasn’t just been about ISO 12647, quality control and disciplined procedures. It’s also been about making print media production businesses more efficient and so print itself more competitive.

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• Print Standardiser is based around X-Rite\\\'s Intellitrax, specifically designed to be robust enough to work in the environment of a press room

The folks at Alwan have been part of colour management since the early years of the ICC. Over the years the company has moved away from providing colour management implementation and consulting services. This work has given Alwan enviable experience in process and technology implementation, starting with monitors and ending with calibration of all devices in digital colour workflows.

Alwan is now best known as a colour management software developer with tools such as CMYK Optimiser, Alwan’s PDF and print standardisation software, and the LinkProfile range for building device link profiles. Since shifting from service to software development, Alwan has established the international KEE Consultants Network to help printers and publishers who want to implement standardisation tools. The company now has over 450 printing and publishing customers worldwide across all sectors, from newspapers to commercial print, and is expanding software sales in all areas. Alwan recently introduced two new products to its range, PDF Standardiser and Print Standardiser.

PDF Standardiser
Alwan’s PDF Standardiser has been co-developed with Enfocus, the established doyen of preproduction data management. PDF Standardiser is a quality control tool that colour manages PDFs during preflight checking and correction, using dynamic colour management and quality assurance technologies. It provides quality control for workflows, much as Alwan’s CMYK Optimiser product has been doing on press for the last few years.

PDF Standardiser includes the Enfocus FullSwitch engine and Pitstop Server technologies to manage preflight checking and workflow interactions. It uses CMYK Optimiser for TAC (Total Area Coverage) optimisation, GCR (Grey Component Replacement) standardisation, dynamic transparency flattening and colour conversion using dynamic Device Link profiles.

PDF Standardiser is designed for people producing lots of PDFs, for example, when delivering content to multiple printers and publishers. The software is also designed for people receiving lots of PDFs from multiple sources and wanting to standardise their internal workflows and output.

PDF Standardiser is a shrink-wrapped tool for ISO 12647 and 15930 (PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-1a) compliance, including Ghent Workgroup PDF/X Plus files to ensure colour accuracy. It brings quality assurance processes to print workflows, by simplifying production for content creators and service providers. Besides compliance to the 12647 standard, PDF Standardiser provides automated and dynamic colour management, transparency flattening and PDF normalising. At the very least, all this should give printers a handy tool towards greater profitability. Hopefully it will also help move the industry away from its craft mentality towards automated process control in production.

Where Wizards?
PDF Standardiser uses a dynamic wizard interface to make it very simple for users to configure the software. Using the answers to a series of basic questions posed by one of two wizards (What is the origin of your PDF files? and so on) the software works out the workflow in Fullswitch, the colour setting with CMYK Optimiser and the preflight profiles with Pitstop so that users output the PDF as well as possible. The second wizard handles file retrieval from hot folders, FTP servers or email messages, and subsequent routing.
PDF Standardiser costs Euro 8000, and is available from both the Alwan or Enfocus channels, with special prices for existing and service customers. It is an out-of-the-box tool rather than something that needs a consultant to implement, as is the case with CMYK Optimiser. Unlike CMYK Optimiser, it is not possible to control the PDF Standardiser software except through the wizards. A free version is available from the Alwan website for a thirty day trial at www.alwancolor.com

PDF Standardiser was developed for designers, agencies, publishers, prepress houses and printers. In order to keep this broad constituency happy it is wise to make technology as idiot-proof as possible. But there are some idiots who have hidden depths and others who are easily confused. We would like to see more clarity in questions such as “What is the origin of this PDF?”. A less ambiguous question might be “Where did the PDF come from?”.

And also, given the broad church for which PDF Standardiser is intended, there should be a bit more flexibility in how people work with the software. There are plenty of people who will never want to do without it, but there are also plenty who will prefer not to depend entirely on the wizards. Because everything is locked down according to the user’s responses to the questions, PDF Standardiser binds them to a fixed process and settings. There will always be situations where colour settings or workflow processes might need a little adjusting, so it would be nice to see a version of this software with that option, perhaps as a professional version.

Print Standardiser
Alwan has partnered with X-Rite to develop the Print Standardiser, which is an automated press quality control and ISO 12647 standardisation product for analogue and digital presses. Based on technologies from both companies, Print Standardiser includes a custom version of Alwan’s CMYK Optimiser, Pantone’s new GEO colour libraries and Intellitrax. This later is X-Rite’s automated colour management scanning technology for colour control on press and measures CMYK and Pantone colour values. The results captured with Intellitrax are directly available to Print Standardiser software.

The Intellitrax technology was selected for Print Standardiser because of its precision. Measuring tools for colour management applications need to be within 10 per cent of the tolerances being measured, so for print a Delta E of 5 needs a Delta E of 0.5 tolerance in the measuring tool in order to be truly accurate. The X-Rite Eye One has a Delta E tolerance of 1 while the X-Rite Intellitrax operates within 0.5 Delta Es. Alwan has tested the tools commonly available on the market and has found that only the Intellitrax technology is repeatable and working to a 2 per cent rather than a 4 per cent tolerance.

Print Standardiser has a wizard-based interface so users can set printing standards and output queue settings, regardless of skills. With this software users can match any ISO printing condition including Fogra 39, Gracol and SWOP. The idea is to reduce print preparation time and cut waste paper and ink consumption to improve overall profitability.

Alwan guarantees to its customers that they will be able to achieve ISO curves using this software which is now shipping. But matching PDF colours to output device curves for specific press and paper combinations, choosing data sources, press and paper combinations, are just the start. Print Standardiser also lets you set the reference printing conditions for each press, using ISO curves or ICC output profiles and auto syncs between ICC output profiles and the target TVIs (Tone Value Increase otherwise known as dotgain).

There are also comprehensive dot gain curve models that can be automatically corrected, applied and exported. Print Standardiser also supports dynamic press calibration with ‘nearly perfect’ TVI matching. This can be managed offline for each press and paper combination, with full calibration and performance reporting on a per press or job basis, daily, weekly or monthly. The data gathering tools for periodic quality assurance are based on automatic measurement and data collection coming from Intellitrax. They provide the basis for statistical analysis and for adjusting TVIs over time as needed. Also, under development and due for imminent completion is support for an ISO compliance report for each job. This will confirm that the job is within tolerances for ISO 12647-2, -3, -7.

Although Alwan recommends using its own 12-patch control strip to build dot gain curves, the software supports any patch users want to use. Print Standardiser works by controlling dot gain curves and taking into account press behaviour to ensure ISO 12647 compliance on every job. Doing this in a standard, averaged way depends on presses behaving roughly similarly. This might not be true in printing plants with drastically different presses, for example, mixing very old machines and very new. Print Standardiser gives operators the means of controlling the standardised printing environment to take this into account.

This software is available either as a complete package or in a basic version. This includes just the software and two day’s training for around EUR 13,000. This of course will only be relevant for existing Intelllitrax customers of whom there are over eight hundred worldwide, mostly in the US and EMEA regions.

Intellitrax starts at around EUR15,000 and is available in three flavours. The D model measures only density, the S provides LAB Delta E differences and top of the range ICC version is a full spectrum and patch measuring device for ICC profiling. At the behest of a press manufacturer’s contact to Alwan founder Eli Khoury, X-Rite is also working on a new measurement tool for digital printers. Code named Capricorn this device is specifically designed to measure bespoke inks and toners as used on digital presses, rather than the standard ISO inks used on conventional presses.

Alwan estimates that printers can gain approximately ten minutes per job in make-ready and save around 200 sheets (plus ink) using this technology. An investment of EUR 40,000 can be realised in around six months according to Alwan. This is a fast ROI and the savings continue evermore. Alwan is also working on a version of Print Standardiser for the packaging industry that is expected to be ready in early 2010.

Standards and process control are about the industry growing up. With these two introductions, Alwan is providing tools for both prepress operators and press managers, making the company the only organisation providing standards compliance and process automation tools throughout the print media supply chain. A great step forward.

 Laurel Brunner is the Managing Director of Digital Dots and the author of innumerable  publishing technology articles since 1989.

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