PrintFlat, the software developed by Global Graphics Software to remove banding in inkjet printing, has been awarded a Printing Industries of America InterTech Technology Award. Global Graphics Software has had its technology honored for two consecutive years.

Justin Bailey, managing director of Global Graphics Software, says, “This is a truly outstanding achievement by our development teams. PrintFlat is an exciting technology that I believe will be a game changer in digital inkjet. Banding has been a problem that printers have been putting up with for too long, having to accept that some jobs just can’t be printed with inkjet. PrintFlat changes all this by solving the banding issue in software, opening up the whole print market to the benefits of digital inkjet.”

PrintFlat software masks the banding or non-uniformity in inkjet output that is caused by variations in printheads as they begin to wear or are replaced. It can even compensate for manufacturing differences between new printheads.

One of the printers to benefit from PrintFlat is Ellerhold AG, a poster printing house in Germany. Maximilian Ellerhold, CEO, says, “When the quality was ‘not passable’ for difficult jobs, for example images with lots of blue sky, it is now very acceptable, even for the most difficult jobs. Any residual visible banding has been removed. We’re now achieving 100% customer satisfaction and have increased our market share of outdoor advertising products in digital printing.”

James Workman, vice president for Printing Industries of America’s Center for Technology and Research, states, “Once the judges saw the process and the dramatic difference that PrintFlat makes, they knew it was an innovation that deserved recognition.”

PrintFlat works by creating a customized calibration based on measurements from a press. It can be applied to any inkjet technology and print industry workflow, can be added to presses already on the market, or incorporated into an inkjet press that’s still on the drawing board.