7-Colour Process Print Control With Wider Gamut

Artwork Systems is using Graphispag to introduce to the European market what it claimed is a system for expanded gamut printing - Equinox.

Artwork Systems is using Graphispag to introduce to the European market what it claimed is a system for expanded gamut printing - Equinox.

The company said beta tests of the new product have shown that Equinox marks a milestone in colour printing within graphic arts, including the commercial, digital and packaging sectors.

Equinox is claimed to combine colour and workflow technologies to create cost-effective control of high quality seven-colour process printing.

It employs colour-conversion technology for expanded gamut printing, enabling the standardisation of five, six or seven inks of the user's choice, which results in shorter make-ready times and less press waste.

The latest product from Artwork Systems, is also said to combine the openness of ICC profiles with Artwork Systems' colour algorithms and workflow expertise.

Equinox bases the technical aspects of colour conversion on standard ICC profiles but permits separate editorial control to allow the operator to choose how images should be separated and spot colours converted without compromising colour accuracy.

The operator does not have to make decisions about colour matching or printing conditions as Equinox automatically retrieves that information from the ICC profile, said the company.

However, users can alter an image-specific gamut and once that has been set-up it can be repeated for as many jobs as required using the automatic Equinox workflow component.

When handling images users have the option of selective gamut expansion.

For example, with the Equinox Photoshop plug-in, operators could choose to make grass greener, reduce the orange in flesh tones or add blue to a violet sweater but not a blue sky.

With spot colours users can choose a colour build that maximises colour accuracy, or a colour build that maximises press stability and smoothness.

added Artwork Systems.

The Equinox technology includes algorithms to enable conversions of line art, vignettes and images.

Four-colour process inks are capable of producing an effective but limited range of colours on paper and traditionally spot colours have been used to generate colours outside of the CMYK gamut, according to Artwork Systems.

However, printing with spot colours is often not economical as special inks must be blended, press cylinders and rollers must be cleaned and prepared for each job and items with unique colours cannot be ganged in the same form.

Printing with seven standard colours offers efficiency benefits compared to printing with CMYK, plus custom spot colours.

The company said that blending of custom inks and set-up of press decks are eliminated because the same seven colours can be run on every job, whilst items with different colours can be ganged together.

The extra three colours come between cyan, magenta and yellow in the colour spectrum and the overall effect of a seven-colour image has more impact than a CMYK image and results in something that is much closer to the gamut of the original in real life.

Equinox support will be offered in applications such as Photoshop and Artpro, as well as built in to Artwork Systems' Nexus and Odystar workflows for users who want total automation.

Equinox is a local site licence including the Equinox colour management module plus colour database and exception library, local site licence for Artpro 9.0 and Nexus 9.0 plus two Adobe Photoshop plug-in licences.

Equinox has been in beta testing at three sites in the USA since 2005 and used in production for live jobs, added the company.

Kevin Bourquin is pre-press manager at one beta site, Cyber Graphics.

He said: "It's really Artwork Systems' workflow expertise that empowers Equinox.

To optimise each specific image, we convert them manually using the Equinox Photoshop plug-In.

But manual conversion of vector elements is not practical in production - from a time or human error standpoint.

For this, we need the workflow tools to automate the process.".

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