As the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. When conveying a brand’s image on the shelf, delivering the correct colors requires the utmost accuracy. There is no reward for coming close in producing Coca Cola’s iconic red or Home Depot’s orange. The color needs to be precise. Thankfully, label and package printing industry leaders have developed the necessary tools to help ensure converters can match a brand’s desired color.

There are more considerations – for both printers and brands – than ever before. Producing consistent color among varying print processes, such as flexo and digital, is critical. Plus, there is an important sustainability aspect to color management. Missing on color, however small the difference might appear, could lead to waste – in the form of reprints and significant time.

“Color management – being able to consistently deliver precision excellence in print – is no longer just a way to ensure products look great on-shelf,” says Marc Levine, director of business development, GMG Color. “In today’s market environment, effective color management is a protective tool for brand sustainability. By reducing the risk of waste from misprints and imperfections down to zero and enabling ink-saving strategies, color management is moving toward a more protective role in print.”

While brands might seem like the ones with discerning palettes, converters are increasingly aware of the value of color management – and the various options available to help in this area. And the newest technologies have never been as advanced as they are now.

“Without using the proper and available tools for creating, implementing and maintaining color-managed standards, it is nearly impossible to be in an efficient overall workflow, making it harder for each area of production to do their job,” states Jeff Skolnik, business development manager, digital/equipment, Anderson & Vreeland. “It would be almost impossible to provide a product that customers would accept.”

“Ten or 15 years ago, I would have said that pressroom color management software was the newest color-related technology that printers should be implementing. Today, there are many solutions to choose from, and printers seem much more open to explore and implement the tools,” explains Catherine Haynes, prepress and pressroom technical resource and training specialist, All Printing Resources (APR). “Originally driven more by brand owners, printers quickly saw the value in adopting these tools for their businesses. These solutions continue to get better. The newest trend is in how these systems can integrate with other systems in production, helping to improve overall efficiencies while decreasing waste related to color management.

“The importance of color and color accuracy has continued to grow for both printers and print buyers,” she adds. “The consumer product companies – and print buyers – are more color savvy than they once were. They are clearly connecting the relevance of color consistency to their brand identity.”

As with every aspect of society, Covid-19 has played a pivotal role in color management. For the past two years, most color approvals were done virtually, which represents a shift from physical evaluations and approvals. Today both brands and converters are embracing the digital transformation by replacing physical ways of working with remote tools for digital color evaluation, approvals and reporting.

“The industry’s move toward digital color workflows is in hyperdrive regarding color management,” says Pieter Mulder, brand global strategic account manager, X-Rite. “The pandemic created significant challenges for brands to communicate color targets and control color consistency. With ink and material costs increasing, converters’ margins are even tighter. Effectively managing color is critical to business success. A digital workflow of connected solutions that include color specification, formulation, measurement and quality control tools help converters get to color faster and more efficiently.”

“The Covid-19 pandemic forced brands, converters and everyone involved in the process to rethink how they were accomplishing things such as color management,” states Sarah Jacks, color perfection manager, INX International Ink Co. “Having digital workflows across the supply chain allowed brands, designers, converters and others to continue their day-to-day practices, and in many cases improve their current practices. Having more consistent and reliable instrumentation also helps to improve the process.”

The e-commerce boom has also placed an emphasis on color. Not only must a brand’s representation convey throughout multiple print processes, it must appear consistently across multiple mediums, from computers to smartphones to tablets.

“Color is the first thing people think when a brand name comes up,” says Alvaro Rodríguez, color management expert, Flint Group Digital. “Being able to reproduce accurate, repeatable color is paramount. At Xeikon, we have developed a color management system that is tied to quality control. Calibrating a press today is great, but we need to be sure that prints are within tolerance today, tomorrow, six months from now and next year.”

While color management may have seen like a luxury some years back, the newest technologies are now a necessity. As converters become ever-more sophisticated with their technological capabilities, ensuring color accuracy is a must for the modern label printer.

Print companies frequently completed this process based on visuals in years’ past, which is obviously quite subjective and prone for error. “Before the pandemic, brands started transitioning to a digital process that uses spectral data and objective number-driven communication within their packaging supply chain,” remarks Mulder. “Over the last five or more years, digital color libraries have evolved to provide brands and their supply chains a centralized repository for securely storing brand colors and operating procedures. These tools, such as PantoneLIVE, help brands and printers achieve consistent color by including color targets and tolerances across all printing technologies, substrates, converters and geographies.” 

“Color management has become more of a requirement to ensure consistency and has become critical in environments that have multiple processes to align these processes to the same standards,” adds Doug Bartlett, business development manager, APR. “For example, aligning flexo with digital and vice versa. Measuring devices, software and processes have all improved to meet this demand.”

Maintaining standards

Adhering to strict quality standards is not a job solely for Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen. Unlike the stove, there are numerous tools to properly implement color standards, and selecting the right one is not always clearcut.

“The world is divided into different color camps,” comments Xeikon’s Rodriguez. “We play nice with all. It does not matter if you adhere to European standards or GRACoL, or another. As long as you can provide an ICC profile of your target color space, we can calibrate our presses to match them as closely as possible.”

Like a restaurant, however, consistency and quality are indicative of perceived brand value. “To maintain accurate and consistent color, you need a color management workflow, instrumentation and software,” states X-Rite’s Mulder. “Color consistency can only be achieved if everybody in the packaging supply chain uses the same spectral data for a particular project, measures with the same calibrated hardware and under the same light conditions. When all partners in the packaging supply chain have instantaneous global access to a customer’s brand palettes, this avoids miscommunication and ensures that the right colors and expectations are communicated. Not only does it tie the design to brand expectations, but it’s a seamless way to hand off color details to prepress and print providers.”

When establishing standards, brands play a pivotal role in the process. The standard or profile will vary based on the converter’s job.

“Brands set their standards and enforce the companies they use to provide proof they can hit and maintain the common standards,” explains Anderson & Vreeland’s Skolnik. “This can include a structure of the types of process, equipment, software and reports to certify or validate their work and ability to comply. Once the standard is established, the optimization of preparing files to hit the standard, creating a fingerprinted plate, proof-to-press match, proofing on a repeatable and optimized process, and maintaining standards in the pressroom so all areas of production are dialed into the same goal (color profile) are measured and maintained.”

While the brands are certainly key in the process, establishing standards allows for everyone throughout the supply chain to agree on specific parameters as they pertain to color.

“The result of unique color standards is the ability to have a more cohesive team effort,” says INX’s Jacks. “The ink manufacturers, converters, brand owners, designers and everyone involved in the process can communicate via the same color standards to reach their goals more efficiently and consistently.”

According to GMG Color, the issue revolves around identifying a target and how closely it needs to be matched. This requires an innate understanding of both color and color difference. Closely connected with this is a strong grip of internal processes in measuring and managing print to correlate directly with what the buyer is looking for. Understanding both sides helps printers bring an educated and authoritative voice to the print buyer and ensure all expectations are aligned, and both printer and brand are positioned to succeed.   

“It’s in this high-precision environment that a partner such as GMG shows its exceptional value by providing the expertise and tools to help converters meet even the most demanding customer requirements,” says Eric Dalton, director of sales, GMG. “GMG software helps converters achieve industry standards, such as GRACoL and Fogra, among others, during their printing process. In addition, GMG can also help converters achieve brand standards set for them with software tools centered around our spectral-based color database, GMG OpenColor.”

“We are fortunate to have a number of good industry standards,” adds APR’s Bartlett. “More important than the standard is the adherence to the process using the most suitable standard. The benefits of standardization and getting everyone on the same page in the plant and with the customer are key to a good color management strategy.”

Label converters must also maintain color standards as they shift between processes. For example, Coca-Cola red must appear the same way, whether printed flexographically or digitally as part of the “Share A Coke” campaign.

“When the G7 methodology was introduced, this significantly contributed to exactly this issue – consistency across print processes,” explains INX’s Jacks. “When devices are calibrated based on a shared ‘neutral’ appearance, printing across various platforms becomes more achievable as these pieces will share a similar appearance. This introduced standards that are based on G7 methodology and have common datasets that are based on specifics for various substrates, as well as printing conditions.”

When printing digitally, Xeikon’s Itasca, IL-based Customer Innovation Center was recently recognized as a Master G7 Print facility. Xeikon has instituted cloud-based analytical tools to diagnose any color issue, and the issue is sorted with no delays, which adds to significant time savings in production.

There are several considerations when navigating print processes, too. “Perhaps most important is to first ensure that the printers and print buyers understand substrates and inks – the two biggest influencers in color appearance,” explains APR’s Haynes. “These two factors must be considered when setting expectations. When it comes to process color images, strategies that focus on identifying the desired standard, and then calibrating those presses to a common near-neutral reference has proven very effective even when applied across different print processes. Often, we define the results as having a ‘common neutral appearance,’ meaning they may not be a perfect match but are visually similar.”

According to Haynes, spot colors have added another layer to the challenge as some print systems may mix these inks in an ink room while other print systems are using process color builds (4-color or more). Again, it is important to set expectations.

“There are methods to predict the potential color accuracy of a ‘built spot’ color versus a pre-mixed ink,” she adds. “Digital printing is a great example since brand and spot colors are typically built from a set of standard process colors available in the system. Many digital printers are starting to turn to color measurement software that has been more commonly directed to other print processes, a tool to help them monitor and manage the consistency of their built spot colors over time.”

Automation ahead

Automation has become essential in the label and package printing process. This process has really “changed the game,” notes GMG Color’s Levine. “Digital technology is one thing but being able to take that a step further and have technology essentially managing its own output has been a real lifesaver for printers – and never more so than in the challenging Covid-19 pandemic,” he says. “It’s no secret that industries have struggled as workforce numbers reduce for safety reasons, but automating processes at each step of the label production journey has ensured many businesses can remain efficient and productive. With retail trends being less predictable, this has been an important lifeline for many printers that rely heavily on fast turnaround, short-run print jobs.”

Manually assembled print production jobs can be automated with the appropriate XML directives, notes X-Rite’s Mulder. This process varies widely depending on the desired attributes and characteristics of each job produced.

“Success is directly tied to the ability to provide the proper XML directives from a front-end in-feed system such as MIS, an order system, etc.,” says Mulder. “Many brands are already taking this to the next level by implementing an integrated solution that manages color quality as part of the artwork creation workflow using tools like Esko WebCenter and the Color Trace module, which integrates with ColorCert. It provides the ability to automatically connect brand color specifications to converters, pre-media agencies, printers, and other partners in the packaging supply chain.”

According to Anderson & Vreeland’s Skolnik, numerous aspects of color management can feature automation. For example, certification reports can be automated, as well as digital measurement reports. Every aspect, from certified proofs to color bars on printed press sheets, can be made available to ensure compliance.

Xeikon’s dry toner engines are all fitted with inline spectrophotometers to automatically allow for savings on waste and rejected jobs during production. Xeikon’s new suite of color management software contains tools that can copy and paste from a pre-printed sample to optimize the brand color for the selected substrate.

“Automation is a game-changer,” states Xeikon’s Rodriguez. “Xeikon uses .CxF (color exchange format) in order to communicate with tools found in the analogue world such as Flint Group’s VIVO or PantoneLIVE, as well as proofing systems.”

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GMG has targeted automation and print-agnostic runs with its newest product launches. GMG ColorServer and SmartProfiler combine to achieve reliable color consistency, regardless of which press is used. GMG ColorServer is a central PDF and image processing unit that accounts for ink saving strategies and color management, which can be run completely automatically. GMG SmartProfiler, working in tandem with ColorServer, is then a profiling tool that helps operators to stabilize and calibrate digital presses with ease. Resources generated can be stored directly onto the central server.

Xeikon has developed several new products to assist with color management, thus allowing the predictability, repeatability and profitability printers are seeking. In 2021, Xeikon unveiled Color Services Pro 2.0. This fully automated suite of color management tools is based in the cloud and delivers every advantage of quality color control, the company says. “With Xeikon Color Control, we now offer the ability to adhere to color standards, but most importantly, keep the machine printing extremely close to the way it was initially calibrated – backed with measured data,” explains Rodriguez, adding, “Best of all, all these measurements are done automatically by our toner machines.

“Using the inline spectrophotometer supplied with all Xeikon dry toner engines, color management becomes touchless and automatic,” he adds. “Last minute tweaks can be made on the fly, and profiles, color tables and quality control are all controlled by AI during production, ensuring the highest quality print is maintained.”

X-Rite, meanwhile, prides itself on helping brands and suppliers address the numerous challenges associated with color management by providing an ecosystem of integrated hardware and software solutions that deliver color coherence that brands and printers are seeking.

X-Rite’s eXact handheld spectrophotometer supports digital workflows and PantoneLIVE digital libraries. Print operators can use the eXact to inspect incoming materials and, more importantly, measure print quality during production and report results back to the brand’s print quality control program through the ColorCert Suite. 

“Our PantoneLIVE offering is unique in that it plays in all parts of the packaging workflow,” explains Mulder. “It provides access to digital Pantone and brand packaging color libraries for accurate and repeatable color regardless of substrate, printing technology or ink type. For example, PantoneLIVE Visualizer lets designers see how chosen color palettes will interact with target substrates and printing processes to ensure design intent is achievable in the final production process.”