Color Me Successful

Implementing a color management system will require you to work with more than one vendor, but the payoffs include material cost savings, color-consistent products and improved customer satisfaction.

by Caroline Miller

THE DECISION to implement a color management system was a no-brainer for Multi-Visual Products' owner Craig Graves. The Murrieta, Calif.-based company—which prints trading cards for youth sports leagues, magazine covers, calendars, magnets, stickers and mouse pads—had a color problem.

When MVP began eight years ago, it had a code blue calibration process, including a scanner and an output device. The company had to tweak the output devices as best it could, but there were many colors that didn't match the original.

"Our reject rates were very high," admits Graves. "We did a great deal of remakes, and the cost of remakes was expensive. A card that would normally cost 40 cents would cost $1.20 to remake."

Realizing it had a problem, the company entered the world of color management.

"We learned how to do all the procedures and developed a workflow that would work. In terms of cost savings, remakes dropped a third by utilizing color management. Aside from less material waste, our labor costs were also reduced," he reports.

Like many who take their first crack at color management, though, MVP's initial effort was not as successful as it could have been. The company continued to research color management options, according to Graves, and decided to integrate MonacoProfiler into its workflow. Every scanner, monitor, printer and output device, including two Indigo digital presses, are profiled and calibrated using the Monaco software.

With the previous solution, Graves estimates that in the year 2000 nearly 4,000 orders out of 800,000 digital products were reworks.

"The price tag associated with this effort was nearly $20,000 in direct costs, but immeasurable in lost customer confidence," he remarks.

Success Doesn't Come Easy

Though success stories like this make color management systems sound like a dream come true, in reality, getting to the level reached by MVP is not easy. This is why integrating color management across an entire workflow continues to be a hard sell among printers.

For those who have taken the plunge successfully, however, the benefits range from material savings, faster makereadies, the ability to venture into remote proofing, providing a color-consistent product and improved customer satisfaction.

Still, getting to that point isn't half the battle; it's the entire war.

"You don't come in one weekend and set up a color management system," notes Gregory Hill, manager of electronic systems for Sandy Alexander, a commercial printer in Clifton, N.J. "It's an evolving process. You are always going to be tweaking and maintaining the system."

Sandy Alexander's most recent odyssey with color calibration began when it switched from a CMYK environment in prepress to an RGB color space. "We switched to an RGB workflow because we now receive files from a wide variety of sources. We have some clients who are very precise with their files and some that lack the knowledge to prepare their files correctly. In either case, we have to make it work. Plus, a wider color gamut is more in demand."

Hire A Consultant

Sandy Alexander's first step was to hire a color consultant to help it work through its color management issues. The company now uses GretagMacbeth's SpectroScan, ProfileMaker 4.0 and ProfileCity ICC Display.

Though MVP's Graves seconds the idea of hiring a consultant, this isn't a prerequisite for success, according to Blayne Jensen, prepress supervisor and systems manager at Lorraine Press, in Salt Lake City. Jensen took on the challenge of becoming his own color expert. Lorraine Press uses Agfa's ColorTune 4.0 and X-Rite's Spectrofiler software.

"It's a lot of trial and error. I recommend that anyone getting started should talk to someone who has successfully integrated color. You're not going to get all the information you need from a single vendor," Jensen says.

Find The Expert

Jensen also recommends seeking out the color expert within a color management software company.

"They are often willing to share more information than the salespeople are. I'm always looking for a technical person's name and phone number."

David Warheit, executive vice president of Extreme Color Technologies in Plainview, N.Y., agrees that the biggest part of getting a color management system in place is doing proper research. Extreme Color uses Imation (now Kodak Polychrome Graphics), X-Rite Spectrofiler and BestColor software, as well as an X-Rite spectrophotometer.

"It's really all about spending hours on the Internet, doing demos and bringing in multiple vendors to set up live equipment for a couple of days," he says.

It is also realizing that creating an entire system requires working with more than one vendor.

"In the beginning, it really would have been helpful to know that I couldn't go to just one vendor for my color solution. Anyone that I've talked to who has been successful has had to use multiple vendors to get what they need," Jensen explains.

It was a realization that Warheit has also come to.

"Many systems are very good on the surface, but when you get into manipulating color within ICC profiles, it doesn't allow you to do it," he says. "Some of them don't allow the flexibility that a high-end shop needs. We also need be able to do isolated color changes and some color management systems don't allow you to do that".

Because no single management system seems to provide all of the tools that printers need, software interoperability becomes an issue, reports Jensen. And that is where research and discussion come into play.

Get Good Support

To develop good software is one thing—to support it after the purchase has been made is another says Dr. Abhay Sharma.

Sharma co-directs the The Digital Imaging and Printing Laboratory at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo.The Digital Imaging and Printing Lab prepares its students for the field of digital imagery and print. It also operates a lab that caters to local businesses. The lab uses Monaco Systems.

"I was very pleased with the response I got from tech support," Sharma enthuses. "On one occasion, I got through immediately. The other occasion, I left a phone message and the technical support professional got back to me that morning. With other larger companies, you never know if they'll get back to you. It's not only important to get through to tech support but also getting satisfactory answers to your questions."

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Sidebar: Consistency Is Crucial

For color management to work, a printer needs four components, says Blayne Jensen, prepress supervisor and systems manager at Lorraine Press, in Salt Lake City. They are:

• The right hardware

• The right software

• The right expertise

• Consistency in the pressroom

Of these four components, consistency is the most important, he stresses.

"Quality control in the pressroom is really essential," says Jensen. "If your presses aren't maintained and are not consistent from day to day, then color management is just a dream and you are just shooting at a moving target. It makes no sense to profile your presses if they're completely different from one day to the next."

Though proper communication between prepress and the pressroom is essential, getting everyone on board the color management train can be difficult. To facilitate this, Lorraine Press requires everyone in the shop to be able to create an ICC profile. "Our shop superintendent...wants to show people that color is not this mysterious thing that only high-end printers with color gurus can achieve," Jensen says.