Fogra Fogra 51 and 52: No Start in sight.

ONE Technologies: The proof paper for Fogra 51 announced in May is still not available.

Fogra Fogra 51 and 52, optical brighteners and the new standards for offset printing and proofing are currently on everyone’s lips. In the proof area we still see only announcements and beta versions, but no real solutionsby now. In 2013 the reorganization of ISO 12647-2 was adopted for offset printing, but according to ECI the earliest “expected recommendation on the implementation of the new ISO 12647-2 as well as the provision of appropriate handouts and instruments’ will be in 2015. The current status of Fogra 51 and Fogra 52 from our perspective:

Color profiles:

  • Fogra Fogra 51 and 52 have completed the beta phase at the Fogra in May 2014 and were forwarded to the ECI. The there in the project “fred15” compiled information and downloads are but from March, July to October 2014, but since then there has been no more news on the new standards. So there is currently no date for the release of the final profiles, handouts and tools foreseeable. Fogra, ECI, bvdm and UGRA continue to work together on the new standards.

Proof Papers:

ONE Technologies: The proofing paper for Fogra 51, already announced in May is still not available today.
ONE Technologies: The proofing paper for Fogra 51, already announced in May is still not available today.
  • ONE Technologies announced in May 2014, the certified proofing paper “ONE Proof Paper 51 SATIN” on … that in November is not yet available anywhere.
  • GMG announced in October, the proofing paper “GMG Proof semimatte 250 OBA”, which to this day is also available anywhere.
  • Also working on new  proofing substrates is EFI, but naming, pricing and release dates are not known.

Measuring technology:

  • Epson announced in August to deliver from 1 September 2014 all Epson SpectroProofer measuring devices with the new measuring head ILS 30 only. Unfortunately, the new SpectroProofer is not yet commercially available as an accessory.
  • While all previous sources reported that the new SpectroProofer –  Although Fogra 51 and 52, ie M1 and M2 capable, can not measure ISOcoatedv2 or M0. EFI with Fiery XF 6.1 and the SpectroProofer ILS 30 support all measurement modes, ie Fogra 51 and 52 and ISOcoatedv2 simultaneously … unfortunately is neither Fiery XF 6.1. previously available nor the SpectroProofer … but according to EFI they are currently testing all 3 modes … M0, M1 and M2 with the new SpectroProofer … that sounds promising.

    Read more

Is it possible to proof on special paper such as production paper?

“We print 135gr/sqm on a Berberich Allegro. Can you make us a proof on this paper? Can you proof on our final production paper?”

Our telephone support often asks for a proof on production paper. Unfortunately, we always have to answer the question negatively. I would like to briefly explain the reasons for this in the following article.

Proofing on production paper is still technically impossible.

All proofing systems currently certified by Fogra are based on an inkjet printer as a test printer, mostly from Epson, Canon or HP. These printers are characterised by a large colour space, good resolution and excellent homogeneity and colour stability – all characteristics that are absolutely necessary for a proof printing system. The Epson systems used by the majority of proof printers are based on 11-colour pigment inks, which can reproduce a significantly larger colour space than e.g. ISOCoatedV2. However, the prerequisite for this is the use of special papers optimized for inkjet printing, in which the pigments and inks are optimally emphasized. This requires special coatings that are optimized for optimum reproduction, fast drying, good abrasion resistance and high UV stability of the print. On an image printing paper without these coatings, the ink would run, hardly dry and would not be smudge-proof. The color space would also be impossible to achieve. A proof would therefore not be possible from this point of view.

Read more

Proof GmbH: Fogra certified for ISOcoatedv2 (Fogra 39) and PSOUncoated (Fogra 47)

Proof GmbH Fogracert Contract Proof Creation 28651

Proof GmbH Fogracert Contract Proof Creation 28651The Proof GmbH has again successfully completed Fogra certification for the production of contract proofs – Contract Proof Creation.

The certification proofs have been produced both on EPSON 7900 and EPSON 9900 proof printers with SpectroProofer measuring instruments. Our two proofing papers were included in the certification process. Proof GmbH is therefore certified for the most frequently used Proofing Standards.

Fogra Zertifikat 2014 der Proof GmbH TübingenThe requirements for the Fogra certification go far beyond simply measuring the media wedge. So the proofs are analyzed according to the following criteria:

  • Compliance with the tolerances of the Fogra Media Wedge CMYK 3
  • Determination of color accuracy [ISO 12642-2 test chart], the color gamut and gray balance
  • Gloss measurement in accordance with ISO 8254-1 [TAPPI]
  • Tone value
  • Register and resolution
  • Status information
  • Tone value
  • homogeneity

In parallel to the measurements, control measurements were carried out with a second X-Rite meter in order to eliminate measurement errors.

The conclusion of the Fogra: “The proofs of the company Proof GmbH are as color accurate and binding in the following combinations:

1. Fogra 39 / ISOCoatedV2
Software Fiery XF 5.2.2
Proofing Substrate: EFI Gravure Proof Paper 4245
EPSON Stylus Pro 7900
Fogra 39

2. Fogra 47 / PSOUncoated
Software Fiery XF 5.2.2
Proofing Substrate: EFI Proof Paper 9120 XF matt
Epson Stylus Pro 9900
Fogra 47

The Fogra certification and the full 11-page report from Fogra can be downloaded here::

Fogra certificate 2014 Proof GmbH Tübingen
Fogra certificate 2014 Proof GmbH Tübingen
Full 11-page report of the Fogra Certification of Proof GmbH Tübingen 2014
Full 11-page report of the Fogra Certification of Proof GmbH Tübingen 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PDF X/4 data – who calculates? InDesign or the RIP?

Recently we received a PDF file from a Swiss customer who asked us to proof it according to ISOCoatedV2. The format was PDFX-4, we could open the file, preflight it and also display it in Acrobat. However, when proofing in Fiery XF 5.2, the file was only output after a RIP time of over 3 hours.

Adobe PDF X4 screen output in Acrobat Professional

We have recorded the screen layout on a modern Macbook Pro with four processor cores and the latest Acrobat Pro version to illustrate the enormous demands on computing power.

It was clear from the screen layout that the RIP time would be quite long, but three hours with just one use was quite unusual, especially since in our RIP two instances of the Adobe PDF Print Engine work simultaneously. Where exactly the error lies in the extremely high RIP time is not yet clear. Both EFI, as the manufacturer of the Fiery RIPS, and Adobe, as the manufacturer of the PDF Print Engine (APPE), have been given the information that on a Harlequin RIP the file was probably ripped within a few minutes. So a bug in the Adobe PDF Print Engine might also be a reason for the long processing time.

It’ s a typical problem. From creation programs such as InDesign and Illustrator, the flattening of file elements with X/4 is passed on to the RIP in the print shop or proof printer.

The case in question was calculated on a quad-core system with SSDs with two instances of the Adobe PDF Print Engine and output correctly for three hours 47 minutes. However, since the final product cover is not expected to be produced in Europe, but in Asia, it was decided to break down the complex graphics with transparencies, drop shadows, etc. in Photoshop and then reuse it as a transparent PSD file. The resulting PDF X/3 file was ripped and proofed within seconds. The colour result was identical to the X4 file.

This example shows: PDF X4 is not just a modified data format. It also shifts the computing power and software requirements from the data creator to the data processor or printing house. But especially with complex graphics this can lead to unpredictable effects. Although PDF X/4-capable solutions such as Fiery XF 5.2 do exist today, a RIP time of over three hours is of course not practical.

Heatset and coldset? What’s the difference?

Nowadays, two different processes are used in web offset printing: heatset and coldset.

The coldset process is mostly used to print newspapers and paperbacks, with the printing ink drying purely by absorption.

In the heatset process, the paper is passed through a large dryer and a chill roll unit after the last printing unit. The length of the printing press is almost doubled by these two units. To ensure that the ink dries optimally, special heat-drying inks are used here.

Read more

What is Moiré? And can I see Moiré in a proof?

Moiré effect through overlapping grid

The Moiré effect, or in other words a halftone screen overlay, is a common phenomenon when viewing prints. It occurs when two even patterns overlap unevenly.
Moiré Effekt

When does Moiré appear?

Moire is always created when screens overlap. Typical examples:

  • You have scanned in a newspaper ad and print it in another newspaper.
  • You print the portrait of a managing director wearing a jacket with a fine houndstooth pattern, a checkered shirt and a finely patterned tie. Regardless of the printing process, complete moiré chaos is guaranteed to break out here.
  • A brick building is reproduced in offset printing.
  • The photograph of a ventilation grille is viewed on a monitor

    Read more

How exactly can printing ink be measured?

For some years now, the possibilities of colorimetric measurement of printing inks have become simpler and cheaper. And so it is often believed that measuring printing inks is simple, inexpensive and, above all, highly accurate. And this also across a wide variety of brands and generations of measuring devices. Is that true?

If you look at a few studies, that does not necessarily seem to be the case. IFRA, for example, requires that when measuring BCRA ceramic tiles the colour differences between different measuring instruments should be below Delta-E 0.3. In reality, however, things looked different. In a Nussbaum study, 8 out of 9 measurements were for a Delta-E greater than 2.0; in a Wyble & Rich study, the deviations were between Delta-E 0.76 and 1.68. But why are the deviations so large?

On the one hand, the measuring instruments differ in the way they illuminate the surfaces to be measured. This is important in two respects: On the one hand, measurements can vary greatly depending on the material, for example, because light is emitted and measured from only one light source onto the measuring surface. If a measuring instrument has only one lamp, which, for example, radiates at an angle of 45 degrees onto the measuring surface and whose reflection is measured, then the measurement can deviate by up to Delta-E 3.0 if you only rotate the measuring instrument about its own axis. If a left-handed person and a right-handed person measure the same tiles with the same measuring device, then just by holding the measuring device differently and by the different lighting angles of the tiles a measurement can be completely different.

The solution for this: In a measuring device, several light sources are distributed or, in the best case, the illumination is emitted directly circular at an angle of 45 degrees in order to minimize such effects.

Read more

Softproof – opportunity or risk?

Softproof means: The correct color display of a printed product on a monitor. Both a standardized print, e.g. according to process standard offset printing, can be simulated – e.g. a later offset print according to ISOCoatedV2 can be simulated correctly in colour on the screen – and the output on digital terminals such as LFP systems in advertising technology.

From a technical point of view, soft proofs are now well controllable. The monitor technology is advanced enough to provide excellent displays with a high color gamut and consistent illumination even for a few hundred euros. For example, monitors in two branches of a company can be coordinated in such a way that the result displayed on the monitors corresponds exactly to each other at both locations, i.e. one image editor in Hamburg and one in Munich can talk about retouching the same file.

The problem: The fact that the two monitors emit the identical color and light result can be precisely controlled. The fact that the colleague in Hamburg is looking at the foggy Alster lake at a northern window, while the colleague in Munich moved the monitor to a southern window in the direction of the Isar river in sunshine, already shows the problem: The environment variables under which the softproof is viewed are not identical.

It is even more difficult when the soft proof is to be used in the pressroom to coordinate the production run. Many companies such as JUST offer modern solutions that can provide a soft proof directly at the press. However, the problem remains that the soft proof should be considered to be less than 10% away of the brightness of the press. While 2000 lux brightness was previously the standard for printers, JUST now writes: “The comparison of soft proofs on monitors with prints and hard proofs is regulated in accordance with ISO 12646. The light conditions basically correspond to ISO 3664, but the brightness must be adjusted to the limited luminance of the monitor, which ideally is > 120 cd/m². ”

Two scenarios therefore arise at the printing press: Either the printer is “in the light” and can then match the print with a contract proof printed on paper, or it is “in the dark” and can match the print with the soft proof. The difficulty of matching paper and monitor – and these are two completely different and difficult to compare media – is compounded by the difficulty of the printer having to dim the light at the press by up to a factor of 10 to be able to match both a contract proof and a soft proof at the same workstation. From today’s point of view, this does not really seem practicable.

Conclusion: The soft proof is on the advance and will certainly sooner or later displace the classic contract proof from the market for reasons of speed and cost. However, due to the great technical lighting and haptic differences between the monitor and the illuminated sheet of paper, a widespread introduction is still a long way off. After all, anyone who has ever performed a color match on a printing press can imagine that a match to the contract proof on the one hand and to a soft proof monitor on the other hand is difficult to imagine at the same time.  The contract proof will therefore also have to remain the first choice in the near future in order to be able to carry out colour-accurate proofing of the printing result in the pressroom.

Can spot colours be proofed?

Since many printed matter contains spot colours such as Pantone or HKS, the question often arises whether these colours can be proofed at all. The answer is “no”. Only an approximate simulation of these colors is possible.
The reason: Each special ink is a specially mixed, “real” ink and therefore cannot be mixed from the 4 printing inks (cyan, magenta, yellow and black).

Today, modern proofing machines have up to 12 different printing colours and, in addition to the classic primary colours, also have, for example, orange and green and violet as real colour pigments in the machine. Proof printers such as the Epson SureColor P9000V are therefore capable of displaying significantly larger color spaces than, for example, ISOCoatedV2. The spot color simulation in these devices is therefore sometimes very good when controlled via a Contone driver, which can access the entire color space of the proof printer. Epson himself points out, for example, that “98% of all Pantone colors” can be covered. This may be doubted, but a number of over 90% of all Pantone colors is realistic from our point of view.

In the past, Pantone and HKS colors were simply converted by the proofing systems to CMYK and then simulated in the standard color space, i.e. mostly ISOCoatedV2. The representation of the colors here is mostly completely insufficient. For the reproduction of Pantone and HKS colours in a proof it is therefore immensely important to have a modern proof printer with many colours and a high colour gamut and a modern proofing software which is also able to precisely control the printed gamut.

Differences in the quality of the simulation of spot colors can quickly be seen in the different printing systems: If the proofing service provider prints with an older 6-color or 8-color system (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, Yellow and Black or Light Black), spot colors are simulated worse than, for example, with a modern 11-color system with Cyan, Light Cyan, Orange, Yellow, Magenta, Light Magenta, Photo Black, Matte Black, Light Black, Light light Black and Green.

The higher simulation quality of the spot colors is generated by the fact that orange, for example, already exists as a separate color and does not have to be mixed from magenta and yellow before the spot color simulation.

Of course, it must be said that there are limits, especially in the area of metallic or fluorescent colours; these colours are currently not reproducible in proofing.

The spot-colour simulation of gradations is also critical

In most proofing systems, only the 100% values of a Pantone or HKS color are underlaid. If, for example, a font logo with 100% color application of a Pantone color is to be simulated, this is precise and is well represented in most proofing systems.

However, it becomes more difficult if the logo contains not only 100% areas but also a 30% Pantone colour area, since this is not defined in the proofing system, but is simulated by the proofing system. In some cases, considerable deviations from e.g. HKS colour fans can be observed.

It becomes even more difficult if, for example, a grayscale TIFF lies on a 100% HKS area and overprints. For the graphic professional it is immediately comprehensible that the HKS surface simply has to become correspondingly darker at this point due to an overprinting 30% black. However, the proofing software must recognize this effect correctly, calculate it correctly and then simulate it correctly with the 11 colors available from the proof printer. It is easy to understand that countless errors can occur. And the supreme discipline: 7-colour Pantone files with lots of overlaying and overprinting Pantone colours or HKS colours with overprinting CMYK elements can at best be calculated even by the most modern proofing systems, but can by no means be colour-accurately simulated.

The bad news is that a proof with spot colors is therefore never as color-binding according to the current state of the art and varies more depending on the proofing system.

But the good news is that spot colors, especially solid colors, can now be simulated well by modern proofing systems. A modern proofing system therefore also offers the possibility of getting a realistic impression of spot color prints at a fraction of the cost of a test print on a offset press.

Standardized light and metamerism effect

A proof is only as good as the light under which it is viewed. Just going to the window or switching on the light at dusk is useless: between December and July, between 8 am and 8 pm, between cloudy and sunny days there is a huge difference in the lighting, which makes any colour evaluation impossible. And if you switch on the light, you normally switch on a bulb with 2700 Kelvin – or even worse: an energy-saving neon bulb that somehow shines in any spectra… a disaster!

The reasons for metamerism effects (in short: that two colors look identical under one light, but completely different under another) lie in the different printing technologies. Colors that look the same under a light bulb can suddenly look very different under a neon tube.

In recent years, ink-based digital proofs have established themselves in the proofing sector. Because it is printed in ink, specially coated paper must be used, which is not in any way similar to the subsequent production run. Anyone who has ever tried to print on glossy coated paper with an inkjet printer knows: the ink never lasts! Metamerism is therefore always involved when a proof is to be compared with offset printing.

The light under which proof and production run are viewed is particularly important.

ISO 3664 regulates standardized light, which is important for viewing proofs and prints. D50 is no longer D50: The International Lighting Commission CIE has revised ISO 3664 in recent years and adapted it to today’s circumstances. If UV components used to be strictly prohibited, they are now part of the standard. In the past, the focus was on consistency between slide and print, while today monitor, digital proof and offset printing are important. Therefore, proofs must always be viewed under D50 Standardized Light, so that they are really “colour-binding” in their perception.

If you want to check metamerism effects, we recommend the UGRA colour temperature indicator. With these strips, metamerism effects can be checked very quickly and clearly.

 

What is the UGRA-Fogra Media Wedge 3.0 used for?

Ugra Fogra-MediaWedge V3.0 and measuring protocol

Every print shop in Germany adheres to a predefined standard, the process standard offset printing. This standard defines target and tolerance values for printed products. In order to prove that your proof delivered to the print shop meets these standards or is within the tolerances, the media wedge is measured and the values analysed in case of doubt – i.e. in case of a streak. If these measured values are correct, the print shop is obliged to adhere to and achieve these values.

Practice generally shows the following: If you want to have a 4-page image brochure proofed and printed, it is usually sufficient to have a single media wedge printed under the 4 pages. If the media wedge is also provided with a test report, the colour accuracy for the print shop is directly confirmed as a guideline.
However, if you want to be on the safe side, have a separate media wedge (including test report) printed under each of the 4 pages of your brochure.

How colour-accurate are proofs?

Ugra Fogra-MediaWedge V3.0 and measuring protocol

A proof is prepared according to the currently valid ISO standard 12647-7 and is legally binding with a UGRA-Fogra media wedge and measurement report.

How does this check work?

If you need a proof with UGRA/Fogra Media Wedge CMYK V3.0, there are two ways to add the test report to your data.

  1. With proofing devices in which a measuring device is integrated, the media wedge with 3×24 standardised colour fields is printed directly under the proof data. This media wedge is driven directly in the proofing device to a kind of “hair dryer” in the measuring device and dried there. After a few minutes of drying, the media wedge continues and is measured directly in the proofer. This takes a few minutes. The measured values determined in this way are returned to the proof server and evaluated there. If the colour values are correct and within the tolerances of the strict ISO standard, a test report of the measurement is then printed directly under the media wedge, which guarantees you colour accuracy in accordance with the process standard offset printing.
  2. For proofing devices without integrated measuring device, only the standardized media wedge is printed under the proof data. A check takes place subsequently and outside the proof printer. The media wedge is then measured with an external measuring device and the target and tolerance values are output to a label printer. This label is then stuck directly under the media wedge.

What is the advantage of automated creation and checking of the media wedge directly in the proofing device?

  • Measurement is automated directly after proof printing, measurement errors due to manual operating errors are excluded. Since the test report is not subsequently attached, as is often still the case, manipulation is impossible.

Further information on the test report, the media wedge and on the work and responsibility of UGRA/Fogra can be found at www.ugra.ch and www.fogra.org.

WordPress Cookie Plugin by Real Cookie Banner