The Status and Implementation of Color Management in Printing Enterprises

"Color management" is currently one of the most popular vocabularies in the printing industry, especially in India. Color management refers to the precise control and management of color transfer in the production process, achieving perfect color reproduction.

I. Analysis of the status of color management in printing enterprises

Now, printers basically believe that color management is a thing before printing and has little to do with the printing part. In fact, if a printing company is to achieve true digitization and standardization of production, this part of the printing industry must be included in the scope of color management. If only the pre-press color management is implemented, it is of little significance to the actual production of the printing factory. The quality of printed matter depends on the final result of printing. If the ring of printing is missing, there is no way to fundamentally guarantee the quality of the product, let alone a stable quality.

Now many manufacturers, especially large and medium-sized printers, have basically implemented color management before printing, but the quality of the product has not been well resolved, especially in terms of color reproducibility. Color management of small factories is basically no difference. Whether the color can be consistent or depends on the operator's technology. Let us give an example to illustrate that if customer A produced a promotional leaflet at the beginning of the year, six months later, he would again produce the same leaflet. Although the film used is the same, the printing conditions are the same, the printing press is the same machine, the ink is the same brand of ink, but in order to make the production of the single color and the original production of a single sheet, they still cost Nine cattle and two tigers basically meet the requirements. At this time, everyone can't help but ask: Didn't they have implemented pre-press color management? Why does this happen? This is because they did not do color management of the printing part, that is, the printing machine did not do data management, resulting in the lack of debugging standards for the printing press, it is difficult to achieve a consistent production state. That is, the optimal field density is no longer the same as the expansion rate of outlets.

So far, many printers think that it is impossible or difficult to implement color management on print. This view is obviously wrong. We can take a look at developed countries in Europe and America. They have implemented color management throughout their production process, and all links have achieved data production. The operators of their printing presses can wear suits, tie to work, and clean up and down. It seems that it is not impossible to implement, but the wrong view leaves us with no implementation at all.

Second, the implementation of the color management of printing enterprises
The implementation process of color management in the production process can be divided into three parts, namely, prepress, plate making and printing, which are independent and interrelated, using the principle of black box. Note: Prepress includes image processing and film output. Platemaking refers to the processing of PS version, including printing and development, as shown in the following figure:

Although the production process can be artificially divided into three parts, they are not isolated and they are inextricably linked. How can color management be implemented? We know that the determination of print quality is actually a judgment of the quality of color reproduction. Whether or not the color is correctly restored is ultimately reflected in the printed matter. So, are we doing this from the printed part? No, color management should be implemented as follows:

1. Implementation of the plate making section
Because the platemaking section is very independent, it does not take into account the prepress and print sections. What we have to do is also very simple. It is to determine the time of the printing and the development time. Professional test strips (such as Bruner test strips) can be used to print on the plate, and then test strips and plate densitometers are used to determine the optimum printing time and development time. Ensure that 3% of the outlets on the PS version are flush, 97% of the outlets do not stick, and the resolution line is 0.008mm.