High-fidelity printing: the driving force behind high-end packaging

High fidelity printing technology can only be used or may be more used in the field of packaging and printing, this statement has been circulating for a long time. It is understandable if the printer is a master or a business person holds this view. However, experts and professors in the printing industry are still understanding this way today and may really need to be taken seriously. This article allows readers to fully recognize the real difference between definition and application of high definition and high fidelity...

Packaging prints pay more attention to the performance of color, because attracting people's attention is one of the important functions of packaging. However, the color of a considerable part of the packaging is the color of the field, flat screen, gradient mesh printing. Four-color print color outside the logo color, designers choose to attract people's eyes light colors, or bright personality colors, the current best process choice, is still the use of spot color printing. Although high-fidelity printing can reach the level of spot color in the effect of color, there is no way to keep the printing color consistent with spot color printing under the condition that the printing process fluctuates normally. Similarly, the high-fidelity printing of light-tone dots combination, although the visual effects are basically similar to the light-tone spot color printing, but can not be the same as the spot color, covered with the surface of the substrate, the gloss of printed products are visible different.

Metal packaging glows with high fidelity

The metal packaging market is rich and colorful. On the one hand, it is a traditional packaging container. What is more important is the vitality brought about by its continuous improvement in product value and product manufacturing process. A better company has grown from producing food cans, candy cans, cookie jars, and industrial containers to manufacturing high-performance containers such as spray cans, beverage cans, cosmetics, and even leading the market for perfume packaging. Packaging containers. At the same time, elaborate and beautiful metal covers have created business opportunities in metal and non-metallic packaging and pose a threat to traditional packaging methods.

The current enthusiasm for the metal packaging market is the beauty, convenience, value, and performance of the products. The environmental issues of packaging materials are also becoming the focus of attention. This requires designers and manufacturers to use new technologies to meet market requirements.

Diversification of materials

Iron and aluminum as packaging materials, the advantages are well-known, but compared with new materials, such as plastics, composite materials, metal materials in the appearance of the formation of the inferior color, metal material strength, integrity, pressure resistance is not a problem, but the modern packaging The diversity of products is more attractive to designers and salespeople. The beverage market is fiercely competitive. But still the largest is metal packaging users. In the United Kingdom, about seven or eight billion cans were used last year. The role of the brand is very important here. People use various means to attract the attention of consumers. We can see many famous brands on the shelf of supermarkets. They use cans with concave-convex, beautiful appearance and beautifully printed cans as packaging.
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Globally, advanced forming technologies have created opportunities for diversifying the shapes of packages. The use of cans is not limited to beverage packaging and is used in the health drinks and cosmetics market. In this respect, appearance impressions and quality impressions are equally important, so there are art styles, decorative aerosol cans are starting to emerge, and multiple necking techniques are used to form the top and bottom of cans and cans of any shape.

Advances in printing technology

The constant demand for appearance impression and brand differentiation encourages the use of new printing technologies and more color printing technologies. What attracts most attention is the use of the Hexachrome system, using six colors to meet the chromatographic needs, with sophisticated printing plate production process, so that the quality of metal printing is greatly improved, such as aerosol cans, paint cans, beverage cans use this new technology.

In the late 1990s, Pantone in the United States, VISU in the Netherlands, LTG in the United Kingdom in the beginning of the new century, B+K in Germany, Greo in Canada, Xpose in Switzerland, etc. have successively developed high fidelity with high definition, high image-level copying effect, and expanded color gamut range. Color printing technology, this technology is a highly realistic color printing replication technology with the original, called the fourth generation printing technology. The core of the fourth-generation printing technology is to use the latest results of computer information and image processing, and to use modern ink technology to achieve high-definition and wide-gamut high-fidelity printing iron. Generally, the use of the amplitude modulation network above 200 Lpi and the frequency modulation of 2540 dpi, and the printing of dots below 2×2 is called high definition printing. The area of ​​350 lines is one quarter of the area of ​​175 lines. Obviously, the finer lines can more clearly express the details in the image, so that the visual clarity is greatly improved.

In China, this high-end, excellent printing technology under the joint efforts of Beijing Jiayi Tianshi Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. and many technical experts, in 2002 developed a mature set of technical products, and passed China's printing and equipment equipment. Industrial Association, China Printing Technology Association, Press and Publication Administration of the printing product quality supervision and inspection center unanimously signed experts. This technology has solved the problems of the difference in the original characteristics of the recorded documents in the conventional printing and the two problems that the four-color color space is much smaller than the color space of the reflected light of the scene, and has been solved uniformly in the high-fidelity printing technology. Because high-fidelity printing color separation technology visually perceives color brightness by regulating the neutral grey component of the printing; expanding the printed color space and mapping the saturation of the perceived color, the printing image effect is closer to the observation effect of the actual scene, from this In effect, high-fidelity printing technology is a sign of a new era in the history of printing technology; this technology will certainly promote the development and application of exquisite printing, personalized color printing, and color security printing.

In May 2003, Hangzhou Zhongliang Meite Container Co., Ltd. contracted to apply the technology of this project. In July of the same year, it entered the stage of technological application. In August, the production application passed the acceptance of experts, and in December it passed the ministerial appraisal. The expert appraisal committee unanimously passed Hangzhou. The identification of "high-definition and hi-fi technology and products" of COFCO Meite Container Co., Ltd. The use of high-fidelity color printing technology and high-definition printing technology on the printed iron container products has greatly improved product quality and increased profit growth. According to the calculation of the company, due to adopting the above technology in the production of printed iron containers, it plans to create a profit of 16 million yuan in three years.

The high-definition, wide color gamut, high-fidelity iron printing technology and products are based on the traditional iron stamping process, making full use of the latest computer image processing technology, precise color measurement control technology, optimization of printing process parameters adjustment, ink analysis and processing techniques, etc. Traditional 175Lpi four-color printing iron, up to 350Lpi ultra-high-definition wide color gamut printing four-color, so that the printed image level more delicate, more abundant, brighter and brighter colors. It has taken an important step towards promoting the high-speed, process-oriented high-speed production of four-color, six-color, and multi-color one-time continuous printing iron by promoting the traditional printing of iron from China to modern digital printing. Its high-fidelity products are first popularized in the high-grade metal container market, fine engineering and related industries, especially beverages, milk powder cans, food miscellaneous cans, moon cakes, chocolates, candy, and paints, coatings, cosmetics, and craft gifts that require high decoration. Applicable to packaging such as boxes and metal caps.

The scope of application of high-fidelity printing technology

Even if more spot colors are used, it is impossible to directly print the desired effect. It is a color image. The dots used for image printing cannot be completed using the graph method. The only way is to use a color separation system. Here, high-fidelity separation technology can fully display the advantages that cannot be replaced.

Stamp printing uses a new base color ink to regulate the tone curve, relying on the experience of the master manually. The reproduction of masterpieces and the printing of prints also require the addition of new primary color inks. Even if it is printed on the serigraphy, it is necessary to use the copy and revision of the film to prepare a printing plate for the new printing base color. Color separation processing based on experience may take a long time, and it is difficult to guarantee the printing quality. The high-fidelity color separation system is based on the principle and technology of colorimetry and is completed with the help of computer technology. It is equivalent to synthesizing the successful experience of many masters, enabling the color separation process to be completed automatically and quickly, and it can maintain the consistency of countless repetitions, reaching the highest level of current print quality.

Printing and copying images has long been neglected in the tone characteristics of brightness. The images recorded as natural scenes, including the artist's artistic creation effects, also include computer-generated images. The visual perception of the sense of space and the changes in color depend greatly on the role of color brightness. Photographers know that the grasp of light is the first element of photography. The colorimetric sense of color is the measure of light.

High-fidelity color separation technology actually follows the principle of colorimetry and regulates the color saturation and color brightness in a uniform color space. In order to increase the color ink, the printing color gamut is enlarged, and the color saturation of the printing color is regulated according to the interval of visual perception of color saturation. According to the linearity of visual perception brightness, the amount of printed neutral gray is controlled to ensure the sense of space and color of the printed image, which is closer to the real scene of nature.

Most people see high-fidelity prints and there are many vivid colors that conventional four-color printing does not have, so they are impressed by the expansion of the printing color gamut. They tend to ignore the linear changes in tone intensity. They did not realize that the root cause of the printing effect was more vivid and the sense of space was stronger. Because it is reasonable to control the amount of neutral ash, below the midtones, more color ink components than four-color printing can be invoked. The darker part of the image can show more colors, so the image is more vivid and real. This part of the colors are all within the range of the conventional four-color printing gamut. The change of printing effect is not due to the enlargement of the printing color gamut. It is the result of the linear adjustment of the color brightness gradation.

Almost all images, even if it is not necessary to enlarge the printing color gamut, must be printed and reproduced in accordance with the effect of human visual perception of brightness. Unless they simply do not know that this effect can be achieved. Currently developed high-fidelity color separation systems, including the use of conventional four-color ink color model, printing color gamut is the same as before, color intensity tone linear and human visual perception effect is consistent.

At this point, readers can clearly understand the scope of application of high-fidelity printing. It can not only be used for packaging and printing, but accurately speaking, it is suitable for all printing companies that mainly print on images. Of course, the premise of the application is still that he needs the effect of high-fidelity printing, whether it is a larger printing color gamut or a color brightness tone curve consistent with the visual perception effect.

With high-fidelity printing products, will fees increase several times? Such sensational speculations will undoubtedly scare off many wait-and-see users. People with a few common senses know that the cost of printing and decorating and decorating is not enough. In the case of tens of thousands of printing fees, the cost of printing media generally accounts for about two-thirds. High-fidelity printing increases the number of basic color materials, machine time, labor costs, etc., and only accounts for a few percent of the charging amount. If a 50-yuan picture book is increased by 1-2 yuan, or a little more, if the quality of printing has improved significantly, what will happen? Will the printing factory be dissatisfied? Publishing society will not object? Will readers refuse? I do not think it will.

Author: Houke Jie Reprinted from: Modern Packaging