Spot Color #3
My good friend Jorge has some interesting questions about spot colors. I choose to post them as a blog, rather as a comment. I know that I haven't been very serious about maintaining my blog lately, because I am closing up my studies at RIT and prepare to move to Modesto, CA, to work for Pacific Southwest Container as a Color Assurance Engineer (www.teampsc.com).
I invite everyone to take some though on Jorge's questions and initiate a round of discussions.
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I have the following questions/comments:
1. The whole reason on reproducing spot color by 4,5,6 or 7 process colors is productivity. The largest downtime of a print shop dedicated to spot colors is the preparation and matching of them for each job. Having a press with only process colors loaded will avoid ink changes.
2. What does the Spotless technology from Creo offer that cannot be done with the normal Adobe Software? Is it the color separation? Are there any other benefits? (Their web page is very limited on information).
3. Kodak or Creo made a test for offset and determined how many Pantone colors could they reproduce. Does someone have access to these results?
4. The Spotless technology is linked to their Stacatto FM Screening technology and Square Spot. Does this bring large benefits on the consistency of the reproduction of the spot colors using process colors?
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5 comments:
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1. The whole reason on reproducing spot color by 4,5,6 or 7 process colors is productivity. The largest downtime of a print shop dedicated to spot colors is the preparation and matching of them for each job. Having a press with only process colors loaded will avoid ink changes.
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Cleaning the press and achieving makeready is an issue. The favourable scenario would be to have a regular customer so that you have the particular spot color prepared in sufficient quantity so that you don't have to formulate the ink. That wouyld take considerable time and effort! In this scenario, cleaning the press and running a new spot color might be more productive. Pantone has published guides of reproducible spot colors by CMYK. This might give a first hint if the demanded spot color is within your printing gamut. If that is the case, it is a matter of cost to choose between spot colors or process inks, depending most likely on ink mileage.
In order to check if a printing unit is contaminated with a previous ink, the best approach is to take a spectral reading and observe the reflectance. That would tell you if there is contamination, occuring at the particular wavelength of the previous ink.
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4. The Spotless technology is linked to their Stacatto FM Screening technology and Square Spot. Does this bring large benefits on the consistency of the reproduction of the spot colors using process colors?
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Answering this question would require testing in order to have concrete results. Out of my mind however, I would say that FM screening is proven to be more consistent than AM, and it will help spot color reproduction with process colors, especially if the software adjusts the plate curves in order to settle for the higher dot gain that FM screening has.
Congratulations on your new position at PSC. From looking at their web site, I am sure you will find out how improtant density control is to their operation. Best of luck with the start of your career and I am sure it will be very exciting.
Agfa has Alterno which can reproduce 71% Pantone colors with deltaE up to 2.1 using CMYKOG (6 inks).
Agfa has Alterno which can reproduce 71% Pantone colors with deltaE up to 2.1 using CMYKOG (6 inks).
Your article is very informative and helped me further.
Thanks, David
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