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.

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