A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W

Softproof

A soft proof is – in contrast to the classic “Hard Proof” on paper – a proof, which is soley displayed on a monitor.

The advantages of a softproof are obvious: It is fast, does not produce costs for paper and ink and is reliably reproduced with little effort. In addition, monitors have a very large colour space and can be quickly linearized and calibrated if necessary.

The disadvantages: Especially when controlling the print, a comparison of a paper proof to the final print is significantly easier than the comparison of a self-luminous image display with a passive illuminated paper. In addition, print control must be done under very bright light (2000 Lux) according to ProcessStandard Offset; for Softproofs on the other hand, the light must be darkened down to at least 700 Lux, because most soft proofing monitors are calibrated to dark 120 to 180 Candela, some monitors being capable of displaying 350 Candela, but these are not capable to display the entire ISOCoatedV2 gamut.

Currently, often a hard copy proof is the common solution in controlling print colour. In the long term Softproofing will certainly be established, since the monitor technology is making great progress constantly. At present, there is with Spectraproof a new softproof software available, that has a spectral approach to softproofing and works with all major monitors, measuring devices and can even approve softproofing lightning. Find more on Spectraproof and softproofing on softproof.com.

 

Spectral photometer

Spectral photometers (or spectrophotometers) are high-quality colorimeters that can measure and accurately describe any colour.
The measuring instrument achieves this by illuminating the measuring surface with the entire spectrum of the visible light. The remission values of certain wavelengths together give the measured value, often this is output in Lab (measuring mode freely selectable from M0 to M2). The spectral measurements can also be stored directly.

High-quality proof printers have their own spectrophotometers to verify the print directly.

Spectrophotometer

Spectrophotometers are high-quality colorimeters that can measure and accurately describe any colour.
The measuring instrument achieves this by illuminating the measuring surface with the entire spectrum of the visible light. The remission values of certain wavelengths together give the measured value, often this is output in Lab (measuring mode freely selectable from M0 to M2). The spectral measurements can also be stored directly.

High-quality proof printers have their own spectrophotometers to verify the print directly.

Spot Colour

Spot colours are inks that do not belong to the CMYK colour space, but are printed as a real colour in an additional inking. The most important representatives are PANTONE, HKS and TOYO colours.

As a bright CMYK Red is produced by overprinting 100% Magenta and 100% Yellow inks, a spot colour, such as PANTONE Warm Red, is printed as a real colour in its own inking unit, and therefore can achieve a higher colour gamut than the mixed CMYK colours. Luminous colours like Pantone 811 or metallic colours like silver and gold can only be reproduced by spot colours.

The disadvantage of spot colours lies in the higher costs. A booklet with a PANTONE spot colour and colourful images has to be printed using 5 colours: CMYK plus PANTONE red. This requires 5 printing plates and a printing machine with 5 colour stations. The advantage of higher colour space is so often contrary to the disadvantage of the higher cost.

Spot colours can be reproduced very well in modern proofing systems. The colour variations of the proofs of Proof.de are published here and mostly reflect the PANTONE and HKS Colours to be well within the achievable Proof.de Gamut.

Colour variations of Pantone colours in the proof in Delta-E

Colour variations of Pantone metallics colours in the proof in Delta-E

sRGB

sRGB is the most widely used RGB colour space, and was created for monitors by Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft in 1996. sRGB is the standard colour space of all inexpensive digital cameras and scanners. Nearly every 8-bit RGB file without profile identification corresponds to sRGB.

Intel, Pantone, Corel and numerous other companies rely on sRGB or have implemented the colour space as standard. Today sRGB is no longer popular in the printing industry, as the colour space is sometimes much smaller than the printable colour range of ISOCoatedV2 and therefore partially restricts the printable colours. Colour spaces such as AdobeRGB 1998 or ECI-RGB V2, which are optimized for printing, are therefore also preferred today for image processing in RGB.

Standardized light

A standardized light is called a defined light condition under which the viewer can view and assess prints or objects uniformly. The most important standard illuminants D50 are in accordance with ISO 3664:2009 for printmaker and for colour matching in prepress and press (colour temperature: 5,000 kelvin) and D65 (colour temperature: 6500 K) for internet graphic designer. D65 is the default setting for most monitors.

Other important types of light are TL84, the standard neon light (colour temperature: 4,100 kelvin), which dominates factories and supermarkets, and A – incandescent light (light bulb) with a colour temperature of 2,700 Kelvin.

SWOP

Specification for Web Offset Publications. Name of an organization and a collection of North American printing standards that define, among other things, the colour values of the primary colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black. They refer to the ISO standard, but are not identical. There are also SWOP specifications for proofing.

TL 84

Light of the neon fluorescent type F11 or TL84 is the classic neon light, the typical “department store lighting”. TL84 represents a three-band fluorescent lamp with 4000 Kelvin. This light is installed in many standard light boxes, to compare the reproduction of materials or surfaces with D50 or D65 standard light.

Tonal Value Increase

Dot gain or Tonal Value Increase is the difference between the halftone values in the original and the halftone values in print. This difference is caused by printing technology.

Transparent

Transparent printing inks that are not opaque are used in four-colour printing.
Special colours such as PANTONE are also usually transparent.

Trimbox

The Trimbox is the final format of a PDF file without bleed. For an A4, the Trimbox of the PDF is therefore 210x297mm, while the Bleedbox would be 216x303mm with 3mm bleed all around.

UCR

Under Color Removal or Under Color Reduction is used when separating LAB or RGB to CMYK. The goal of under color reduction is to reduce the CMY parts in black pixels in order to reduce the overall color coverage.

Colours from only one or two primary colours, e.g. pure cyan or pure red from magenta and yellow, are not affected by UCR. The UCR process is only used for colours consisting of all three chromatic colours.

The method is permanently implemented for separations via a CMYK ICC profile and cannot be changed. The limitation of the maximum ink application to 330 or 300% is a result of UCR, because higher ink applications would on the one hand prolong the drying times considerably, and very thick layers of ink can become cracked, e.g. when folding paper.

A second process is GCR – Gray Component Replacement.

UGRA

Ugra is the Swiss Centre of Competence for Media and Printing Technology. The UGRA is particularly active in the areas of control agents and certifications.

Color accurate Proofs have to contain a media wedge, one of which is developed and published by the UGRA and Fogra. The latest revision is currently the Ugra / Fogra Media Wedge V3.0.

The Proof.de metamerism card is based on the UGRA color temperature indicator which can be used to check the correct lighting of digital proofs and prints. It can be purchased in the store of Proof.de:

UGRA Color temperature indicator

Weblink: www.ugra.ch

Uncoated paper

Refers to all papers that have not been finished with a coating application.

Validation print

A Validation Print is a color-accurate print according to ISO 12647-8. The Validation Print has higher color tolerances than the contract proof according to ISO 12647-7 and, unlike the contract proof, is NOT color- and legally binding.

Since even cheaper digital printing systems are capable of producing Validation Prints through continuous calibration and profiling, they are sold as proofs by numerous suppliers under artificial names such as “Design Proof”, “Schwaben Proof”, “ISO Raster Proof” and many more. Also the company Xerox invited to “Proofing with Xerox” events, although currently no Xerox system is able to achieve contract “Proof” quality, but only Validation “Print” standard. However, a “Print with Xerox” event would certainly have attracted far fewer participants.

The quality and performance of a Validation Print System can, for example, be checked and issued by Fogra with the “Validation Print Creation” certificate. Companies that are certified by Fogra to produce Validation Prints are likely to carry the FograCert logo. Using the certification number, it is easy to check on the Fogra website whether it is correct and valid.

Water-absorbent

The technical term for this is hydrophilic (ancient Greek: hýdor “water”, phílos “loving”). Hydrophilic surfaces absorb water and can thus be wetted with water.

Water-repellent

The technical term for this is hydrophobic (ancient Greek: hýdor “water”, phóbos “fear”). Water rolls off hydrophobic materials without moistening them.

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