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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.
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
No Moiré occurs when:
The motif is printed large enough, e.g. on a trade fair wall, so that no grid overlapping occurs. The print screen is sufficiently fine to reproduce the image screen completely.
The motif is printed small enough so that no screen overlay occurs. If the check shirt is printed so small that no more check can be reproduced, Moiré will no longer appear.
Printed in a frequency modulated screen. If the screen is distributed seemingly chaotically over the page, the chance of an overlay is significantly minimized.
You will find numerous examples of Moiré images in the Google image search. Particularly exciting: checkered shirts in different magnification levels. Have a look and search!
For the most part, moiré cannot be checked in a proof.
All common proofing systems concentrate on the reproduction of colours during proofing, but not on the reproduction of the typical offset screen and offset rosette. Why is that?
Printers work with different screen widths and screen angles. From 54 to 80 screens in sheetfed offset to 32 screens in newspaper printing, there are many screens on the market. Sometimes the screen dot is round, sometimes square, sometimes diamond-shaped. In addition, the screen angle of CMYK and spot colours also varies from printer to printer. And some printing companies also print a frequency-modulated screen that is not subject to screen angles but is produced practically randomly by the RIP. As a result, proofing companies mainly concentrate on the reproduction of colours, but not of screens and offset rosettes.
The most common proofs are produced as detailed as possible in inkjet printing without raster reproduction. In addition, proofing software manufacturers often use other calculation algorithms to make the proofs look more realistic. While in practice EFI proofs often look much fuzzier than modern offset prints printed via CTP, GMG uses artificial noise to make its proofs “look bad” and thus possibly better match the printed result. It remains to be seen whether this is useful and effective, but it also leads even further away from a recognizable Moiré.
Reliably detecting Moiré is expensive.
The only way to reliably predict possible Moiré is a press proof according to the precisely identical screen and screen angle specifications of the printer who prints the run, i.e. optimally a press proof at the same printer with the same prepress and on the same press on which the final print will later run. This is expensive, but it accurately shows the final print.
A test print at Flyeralarm is no solution.
Although Flyeralarm mainly prints the supplied data in a very high quality and accurate way, screen spacing and screen angle are certainly not identical to those of the local printing house. The Moiré at Flyeralarm is therefore certainly not comparable with that of the local printing house.
We recently had a very exciting example at hand. A notepad was printed with a millimetre grid in screened black. Picture 1 on the left shows the millimetre grid with a 45° screen angle in black and a 70 screen. Sometimes vertical lines are missing and at the bottom horizontal lines are completely missing due to the screen overlay. Figure 2 on the right shows the same millimetre grid with 15° grid angle in an 80 screen. The millimetre grid is reproduced evenly.
Both notepads were produced on the same day in the same printing company.
Interestingly, the repro company that produced the printing plates had manually changed the print screen from 15° to 45° for the first set of plates on the left because they thought it would give the best result. However, the unsatisfactory result was immediately apparent during the press proof. A notepad with missing lines will certainly not be accepted by the customer. After resetting to the original screen angle of 15° and increasing the screen from 70 to 80, a harmonious reproduction of the millimetre screen could be achieved without difficulty.
RGBcolour spaces are colour systems that represent different hues with the three primary colours red, green and blue. RGB colour spaces are used in digital image processing, photography and computer technology to precisely define colours. The most important RGB colour spaces and their special features are: sRGB sRGB is the most widely used RGB colour space and is used by most monitors, printers and digital cameras. It was developed by HP and Microsoft in the 1990s to create a standard for colour representation on the internet and on various … read more
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 recent weeks, there have been lengthy discussions on the Fogra digital printing mailing list as to whether a research project should be launched to define standardised tonal value gradations for spot colours. What is this all about? In the field of CMYK and seven-colour printing, the definition of clear, printable and proofable standards is well established and has been tried and tested in practice. If the paper or paper class is known and defined, a measuring standard such as M0/M1/M2 has been established and the content of optical brighteners … 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
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
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
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
Over the last few months, we at Proof.de have been thinking about further improving our already very good colour measurement technology in terms of speed and measurement precision. Relatively quickly it became clear that only two devices would come into question: The KonicaMinolta MYIRO-9, the successor of the former FD-9, or the X-Rite ISIS 2 XL. The starting point: Since we at Proof GmbH have 5 proofing devices, the calibration of targets for profile optimisation is a time-critical undertaking for us. Therefore, we had been looking around for an upgrade of … 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
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.
A few days ago Proof GmbH was the first company to be certified for proofing for the new 7C exchange colour space FOGRA55. Fogra has developed characterisation data for extended multicolour printing with the printing colours CMYKOGV – i.e. cyan, magenta, yellow, black (contrast), orange, green and violet – FOGRA55 as part of a research project over the past few years. The characterisation data and the ICC profile Ref-ECG-CMYKOGV_FOGRA55_TAC300.icc have been published on the Fogra website in recent weeks. We have now carried out the certification via GMG ColorProof, as … read more
From now on you can order proofs for metal decor printing on white sheet metal at proof.de: The ICC profile for Fogra60 is Metal-Printing_MPC1_FOGRA60.icc
Peter Jäger is an expert in colour management that reliably works across the boundaries of printers and monitors, web and print – essentially: cross-media.
In this short image video we – the Proof GmbH – introduce us and our work. Find out who we are and what drives us. What do you think of our short film?
Offset and Newsprint ISO Coated v2 (ECI) / ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) Profile: ISOcoated_v2_eci.icc Standard for glossy and matte coated paper Paper: Types 1 and 2, gloss and matte coated Tone value increase curves A (CMY) and B (K) as defined in ISO 12647-2:2004 Characterisation Data: FOGRA39L ISOUncoated Profile: ISOUncoated.icc Standard for uncoated white natural paper Paper: paper grade 4, uncoated white offset, dot gain curves C (CMY) and D (K) from ISO 12647-2: 2004 Characterisation Data: FOGRA29L PSOCoatedV3 / Fogra 51 Profile: PSOcoated_v3.icc The successor of ISOCoatedV2 for glossy … read more
The announcement was hot: As of March 2022, Adobe software products will no longer contain PANTONE colour libraries. What follows now? Who loses, who wins?