An LED is a ‘light-emitting diode’ and in the graphics industry stands for the new ‘LED’ light, which has replaced older light sources such as neon tubes and tungsten lamps. Neon tubes are mainly known from the D50 or D65 standard light range. Today, LED light sources are predominantly used for standardised light in particular, as they can be spectrally adapted better and often emit a more harmonious light spectrum than neon light.
In modern standardised lighting, it is possible not only to set up standardised light for one type of light, such as D50, but also to simulate D50, D65, incandescent light and much more using several spectrally different LED lines by dimming and mixing the spectra differently in one lamp. In addition, the LED luminaires can often be dimmed, which was not possible with neon tubes.
What the industry is still waiting for are cost-effective standardised LED retrofit solutions, but these are unlikely to be long in coming. As the big players such as JUST Normlicht and GTI have dominated the market up to now, only expensive retrofits of the entire lighting unit have been offered instead of removing the old neon tubes and replacing them with new LED tubes in the same housing. At JUST, for example, replacing a small standard lighting unit with four tubes costs several thousand euros, as a completely new unit is used here and the old one has to be disposed of. Today, specialised smaller companies such as Lacuna Solutions can also offer modern and innovative, controllable standard light luminaires for new standard lighting solutions.
Today, however, LED light sources with a colour rendering index of over 98 are also available on the market, so it seems to be only a matter of time before LED retrofit solutions for D50 and D65 standard light will also be available for the slim replacement of old standard light tubes while retaining the reflectors. If the European and American suppliers do not present any solutions here, then the Chinese LED construction experts will probably take on the market and enter the market with LED retrofit tubes for standardised lighting in the near future. In any case, LED technology is already sufficiently advanced.
Today I received an email in which PANTONE asked how it should orientate its products and services in the future. The users were asked which countries, industries and company sizes they come from, but also what PANTONE products should look like in the future and what customers would be prepared to pay for PANTONE services in the future. Question: How much can PANTONE services cost? PANTONE appears to be orientating itself on the PANTONE Connect prices: All price queries have the lowest price category < $ 7,- / month, i.e. … read more
In 2021 proof.de was again Fogra certified including Fogra “Spot cert” certification, i.e. for the display of spot colours such as PANTONE C and U.
Several errors have crept into the new PANTONE 2023 fan decks. In both the PANTONE Solid Coated and the Solid Uncoated color fans, there are colours for which the new ink formulations are incorrect. In the PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated fan 2023, PANTONE 107 C and PANTONE 108 C have absolutely identical ink recipes, as well as PANTONE 113 C and PANTONE 114 C. As the colors differ, this cannot be the correct. Several errors in the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 In the PANTONE Solid Uncoated fan 2023 … read more
After Eddy Hagen pointed out in this posts, that there were some major colour deviations between the brand new PANTONE Solid Coated Guide 2023 and the previous version especially for the PANTONE 2635 C, I was curious to lookup the same colours in the new PANTONE Color Bridge Coated Guide of 2023 and compare the colours with the previous version. I measured a dE00 of 8,15 between the two colours that Eddy mentioned, which is really far apart from how accurate PANTONE colours should match between the different PANTONE guides. … read more
In recent years, various problems have arisen with our previous proof paper supplier. On the one hand, we sometimes had to wait more than three months for paper deliveries; on the other hand, we sometimes had significant problems with batch-to-batch discrepancies, surface defects and much more. After lengthy deliberations, we decided in December to replace all the paper. We therefore received pallets of new paper at the turn of the year, which we are now gradually incorporating into our production. There will be no hard cut, but the new papers … read more
Whether it’s a large global corporation or a small company, the following often applies to designs or redesigns today: we develop everything for digital first.
Digimarc is a digital watermark that can be used to embed information in images, videos or other media. Digimarc watermarks are invisible to the human eye, but remain recognisable to special software or devices. Digimarc is becoming increasingly popular in the packaging sector in particular, as this technology allows the digits of the EAN barcode and more to be applied invisibly to all areas of the packaging. Digimarc and EAN barcode at the supermarket checkout When scanning at the checkout, the checkout staff do not have to search for the … read more
Even almost 9 years after the introduction of the successor colour space PSOCoatedV3, ISOCoatedV2 / FOGRA39 is still the most widespread colour space in Europe. We at Proof GmbH count around 200 jobs from time to time for the German Printing and Media Industries Federation, among others. In the last count, proofs in ISOCoatedV2 accounted for around 68% of all proof jobs at our company. This is a clear sign of the continued widespread use of the colour space. ISOCoatedV2: From the classic colour space to the beacon of the … read more
A new generation of colour measuring devices is entering the market: in contrast to the classic measuring devices, which are available as a fully encapsulated system either as a colourimeter or as a spectrophotometer, and then supply the data to a computer via an interface or app or display it directly, the new generation of colour measuring devices consist only of lighting and software, with the optics of a modern iPhone from Apple being used as the sensor. Until now, there have been two categories of measuring devices on the … read more
In the current issue of Fogra News “Fogra Aktuell” Proof GmbH is involved in two places. Firstly, a summary of the Fogra report on our first FOGRA55 certification for seven-colour printing with extended colour space in CMYKOGV appeared. You can also find more information on our FOGRA55 certification on the Fogra website: https://fogra.org/en/press-releases/fogracert-erste-cpc-zertifizierung-fuer-fogra55-cmykogv-330 and on proofing.de: And secondly, there was a report on the completion of the research project for textile digital printing, FOGRA58, in which we were allowed to investigate and test the proof capability of the new textile … read more