Visitors to the Global Graphics stand at Labelexpo saw a host of special features for digital labels and packaging printing in the Harlequin RIP, some of which have been introduced during the past year as the company expands its portfolio of press vendors supplying this sector of the market.

New features include controls for deciding when to blend emulated spot colors with process colors for accurate brand color matching, and extended controls over PDF layers so that optional content used in process control can be individually switched on or off, for example, to print just cut and fold lines for lead-in sheets.

“An increasing number of vendors are using Harlequin under the hood of their solutions for labels and packaging,” said Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics Software. “So naturally, as we work more closely with them we jointly identify opportunities to fine-tune our software to give print shops and converters a better solution. Just to take one example, why does it matter at which stage you blend spot colors that are emulated in CMYK, or CMYKOG etc., with process colors? Well, you might be deliberately emulating an offset or flexo print standard for images and other graphics in the process inks, and you don’t want to compromise the gamut available for your brand colors by including them in that emulation. But you definitely do want to make sure that your ink limiting transforms apply to them to avoid issues on press.

“With controls like this and a host of other features for labels and packaging production Harlequin gives you the flexibility to get the best results out of your workflow,” he adds. “I look forward to the day when vendors give us permission to announce that they have chosen Harlequin.”

The Harlequin RIP transforms design and prepress data into a format that can be printed and feeds that data to the inkjet printhead, toner marking engine or laser plate-setter press. It is highly tuned for performance, to produce the highest speed possible without compromising on print quality.

It includes rich support for spot colors, colorant sets beyond CMYK, overprinting, and variable data print optimization for processing batches of labels imposed together, serial numbers, track and trace and randomized versioning. It also includes halftone screening developed specifically for a variety of print technologies, including flexo and inkjet.