Step one

Get a hold of the document and read it, yes read it all 32 pages of it. Putting it next to the press is a nice idea but it won’t do you much good, so reading is your only realistic option.

Step two

The second step is to take an inventory of your processes and to measure typical jobs in order to establish average colorimetric values for the work you are producing at the moment. Coverage should be between 300 and 350%, depending on the paper type. And make sure you use consistent grey balance in all testing as well as the same substrate, selected from the eight paper types listed in ISO 12647-2 on pages seven and eight, ideally the one that works best with your digital press. Compare the measured values with the values in the ISO document and you will have a benchmark of sorts. The gap between the two sets of values is an indicator of how much work needs to be done if you are to achieve ISO 12647-2 compliance.

Step three

Once you have established what colour values you are printing you have to work out why the values are as they are, in order to figure out how you can improve the numbers. This third step is extremely important and the answer to the question of why the colours print as they do will be specific to your printing operation, and perhaps even to your presses. For instance, you may find that you cannot match the values for the Magenta, no matter how hard you try. In such a situation it’s best to get in touch with the digital press manufacturer to ask them how it can be fixed.

Step four

Understanding the underlying cause for colour differences between what you produce and what ISO 12647-2 requires, will form the bulk of your compliance work. You may be able to answer the question on your own or by working with your operators. It might be that you need external specialist advice, or to work with your press manufacturers to do a complete overhaul of your workflow.

This will depend on the extent of your operations and the scope of the compliance project. For instance, you may have a single digital press and Digital Front End (DFE) or you might have multiple engines and DFEs, plus a small herd of offset presses. In the latter case, achieving common colour appearance based on ISO 12647-2 targets will be a major project so you should ensure that it is properly resourced in terms of time and money.

Step five

The fifth step is inevitably testing your set up and remeasuring your output. Ideally you should be doing this throughout the course of your compliance project. With every change you make, measure a testform and keep track of the data over time. The last part of the project is to print your sample testform in a live production situation, along with a customer’s job even if the customer doesn’t care about ISO 12647-2 compliance.

Conclusion

The work you have done for each of these five steps will have uncovered all sorts of interesting quirks in your workflow. Ideally you will have resolved them and eliminated inefficiencies in the process. You will have identified problems in PDF processing, colour data transforms, most likely associated with incorrect ICC profiles. All of these things and many more will have undermined your production efficiency, so sorting them out means that you have improved capacity as well as performance.

Take some time to consider how you will communicate your production improvements to customers. Above all, consider how best to monetise jobs that benefit from ISO 12647-2 compliance.

Jobs with brand colours and that are produced using multiple processes are obvious candidates. Clients who want consistent output across geographies also create opportunities for printers, especially if they are prepared to pay for peace of mind. And making money from your services is ultimately what compliance to ISO 12647-2 is all about.

For more information on this specialist subject contact Ricoh directly to advise on your first steps into gaining compliance. Connect and contact us on LinkedIn, Twitter or call 08457 44 55 65.

You can find the other posts in this series below:

• Why professional printers need to use ISO 12647-2 for digital printing
• The ISO 12647-2 edge: offset versus digital print
• How new digital print standards will transform your bottom line

The post The 5 steps a digital printer must take to get ISO 12647-2 compliance appeared first on Insights.

This is unsurprising because standards compliance is a pretty dull topic, even though it can have a direct and positive effect on your bottom line. Everyone’s heard of ISO 9001 for quality management systems. This ISO best-seller is used in virtually every industry from plumbing to hairdressing to successfully improve business management processes. It’s of course had a wide uptake in the graphics industry, even though it is not specific to graphics production.

Boost those margins

Closer to home ISO 12647-2* is a stronger candidate for solving the money and margins conundrum. For graphics and digital print professionals this standard has proved to be a valuable means of tightening business performance as well as ensuring consistent output quality in digital as well as conventional offset processes. Companies which have gone through the formal certification process to ISO 12647-2 cite improved margins as one of the biggest benefits.

But it’s not only margins that contribute to a return on investment in certification. Certification can be a laborious process involving management and operator time, training, and lost opportunities if it becomes too much of a distraction for the business. However, because of all of these factors, companies which have undergone certification find that their improved process control and management yield additional benefits. Every company that we have audited for ISO 12647-2 certification has said that improved cost control and profits comfortably paid for their investments. They also cite reduced waste, improved customer relations and increased capacity utilisation, and improved bottom lines.

Get certified for fewer delays

Certification to ISO 12647-2 improves your bottom line because it requires proof that you are in control of your business and production processes. Producing said proof requires management control, often in areas of the business that had been overlooked such as inventory control for substrates and inks. Following a certification project, margins on jobs are likely to be higher because jobs are produced more efficiently, with less delays and errors in production. The proofing cycle is streamlined, unit costs are lower because of reduced start-up waste. Production halts, such as failed PDFs, are minimised or even disappear completely.

Create time to focus on high value work

Operators in an ISO 12647-2-compliant facility can focus on exceptions handling, working with customers on jobs that need special attention while the rest of production ticks over producing less demanding work. Business owners can increase revenues through additional services supporting customers or helping them with new projects, because they know that the print will be produced without errors, remakes or delays.

Efficient process control means improved return on the capital you’ve invested in expensive machines, and keeping them running to maximum capacity. In a digital production environment this means more job throughput and a competitive edge especially against competitors printing on offset presses.

For more information on this specialist subject contact Ricoh directly to advise on your first steps into gaining compliance. Connect and contact us on LinkedIn, Twitter or call 08457 44 55 65.

You can find the other posts in this series below:

• Why professional printers need to use ISO 12647-2 for digital printing
• The ISO 12647-2 edge: offset versus digital print
• The 5 steps a digital printer must take to get ISO 12647-2 compliance

The post How new digital print standards will transform your bottom line appeared first on Insights.

Working with ISO 12647-2

ISO 12647-2 is the benchmark colour quality standard for the graphics industry. It specifies data delivery requirements and colorimetric aim values for a range of different paper types, yet neither of these is wholly exclusive to offset printing. Meeting the ISO 12647-2 requirements can give digital printers an advantage over offset competitors, even though the standard was not intended for digital printing processes.

There is no ISO standard for digital printing, so offset and digital printers alike rely on ISO 12647-2 to prove their quality credentials. But digital printers can go a step further to deliver value in addition to proven superior colour quality. Direct digital printing with an automated workflow also cuts production steps, reducing the chance of production errors. Only with a digital printing system is it possible to produce variable data prints. Only digital printing can support zero inventory publishing applications, producing runs of one on demand when orders come in.

It wasn’t designed for direct digital output, and yet ISO 12647-2 supports the process automation that goes along with digital colour printing. The standard stipulates that incoming data should be in the PDF/X data format. If for some reason the work cannot be submitted in PDF/X, print buyers can instead provide an ICC output profile and specify the printing condition. Incoming jobs that comply with ISO 12647-2 can thus be processed automatically, hands-free direct to plate or digital press.

The ‘cost per print’ conversation is changing

Offset printers may also claim an edge with the unit price argument: the cost per print goes down as the run length increases. That calculation was once meaningful, but it belongs to the days of expensive, bespoke prepress, and a time when runs of 5,000 impressions were considered short. Inventories and storage costs tie up capital for both print service providers and print buyers; today’s prepress is cheap and runs are short.

High value digital prints are produced on demand, often close to their point of use, within hours of receipt of order. The unit cost conversation is an easy one for digital printing companies to have, not least because of the high value of just in time production. That leaves the colour quality claims printers make in favour of offset, and ISO 12647-2 fortunately makes that assertion easy for digital print providers to answer too.

Why you need to prove your colour is consistent

Process efficiency, the on demand model and scope for variable printing are all strong reasons for print buyers to opt for digital colour printing, without worrying about the output quality. Digital printers can prove their capacity to produce consistently high colour output quality through compliance to ISO 12647-2. The offset process’s benchmark for colour quality output has become the tool for driving growth in digital colour print volumes and applications. Using that tool effectively can seriously improve margins.

For more information on this specialist subject contact Ricoh directly to advise on your first steps into gaining compliance. Connect and contact us on LinkedIn, Twitter or call 08457 44 55 65.

You can find the other posts in this series below:

• Why professional printers need to use ISO 12647-2 for digital printing
• How new digital print standards will transform your bottom line
• The 5 steps a digital printer must take to get ISO 12647-2 compliance

The post The ISO 12647-2 edge: offset versus digital print appeared first on Insights.

Consequently, the industry has embraced digital printing as part of its response to changing market requirements. Brand owners and designers want more colour, more frequent updates to jobs and to produce them in shorter runs. Often working with print service providers, they have developed an amazing array of new applications. Many of these, such as variable data printing, are only possible with direct digital output devices.

Colour quality printers can trust in

But for long or short runs on conventional or digital presses, colour output quality must still be managed. And for jobs produced using several different printing systems, process and colour data control are absolutely vital. It’s the only way printers can ensure that the work they produce looks identical across print methods and production sites. Print buyers who use multiple printers to produce the same job, or versions of it, need to be able to trust that all prints have a common colour appearance.

That’s not easy, especially in commercial markets where digital printing systems stand shoulder to shoulder with traditional offset litho. But markets are dynamic and clever, and they respond to opportunities. When it comes to proving that digital printing system output is comparable to that of offset, savvy digital print companies have turned to ISO 12647-2 (Graphic technology — Process control for the production of half-tone colour separations, proof and production prints — Part 2: Offset lithographic processes).

This international standard defines requirements for a general printing condition based on:

• The substrate
• Colorants
• Screening
• Tone Value Increase (TVI otherwise known as dot gain)
• The ink sequence

This information is the characterisation data that describes a given printing process, so the stringent requirements of ISO 12647-2 summarise expectations for accurate, high quality colour production.

A universal reference

ISO 12647-2 was first published nearly twenty years ago, and over the years it’s become the universal quality reference for offset printing across the globe. Of late it’s been embraced by digital printers as well.

The adoption of ISO 12647-2 by digital printers may seem curious, but the standardisation of digital printing has so far proved elusive: the range of digital printing method and colorants is just too diverse. In a highly competitive market it makes sense for digital printing companies to conform to ISO 12647-2. Conformance demonstrates that a properly set up digital printing press can match offset output quality.

This means that print buyers do not have to discuss colour quality with their service providers: conformance to ISO 12647-2 confirms it. Printing companies can instead focus on delivering jobs, confident in their ability to match supplied proofs and output from other ISO 126747-2 compliant printing systems.

Customer satisfaction

Brand owners and print buyers can use ISO 12647-2 compliance as a convenient means of qualifying print service providers when asking for tenders. The standard provides a value add to a printing company’s business that can lead to a wider range of work coming in. It’s a tool that helps printing companies to guarantee colour quality and common colour appearance across print runs, leading to less uncertainty, more throughput and improved margins.

For more information on this specialist subject contact Ricoh directly to advise on your first steps into gaining compliance. Connect and contact us on LinkedIn, Twitter or call 08457 44 55 65.

You can find the other posts in this series below:

• The ISO 12647-2 edge: offset versus digital print
• How new digital print standards will transform your bottom line
• The 5 steps a digital printer must take to get ISO 12647-2 compliance

The post Why professional printers need to use ISO 12647-2 for digital printing appeared first on Insights.