Proofing Software Ensures Consistency

With the aim of maintaining its quality standards, Helio Graphic System (HGS) has invested in five of the most recent version o4.1 of GMG's Colorproof proofing system.

With the aim of maintaining its quality standards, Helio Graphic System (HGS) has invested in five of the most recent version o4.1 of GMG's Colorproof proofing system.

The integration of the GMG Colorproof colour management software was carried out by Fuji France.

The pre-press company has 35 employees and specialises in mail order catalogues, mass distribution, and advertising.

Its client list includes French and European mail order companies, such as La Redoute, Les 3 Suisses, Becquet, Damart, Yves Rocher, JD Williams and Venca.

Diego Jannelli, director of the Helio Graphic System production site and Angelini group head office in Monaco, said: "As each catalogue has over a thousand pages, several pre-press service providers share the job, and the client sets out its specifications in order to maintain product consistency." HGS has always kept a close eye on technological developments and it now, five GMG Colorproof systems and manages three Epson Stylus Pro 4800 and two Iris inkjet printers.

"We have to keep a few Iris printers, as some of our clients prefer them, but Epson seems to have become the current and future standard in terms of inkjet printers," said Diego Jannelli.

"In fact, Epson has become a benchmark in the proofing world due to its excellent print repeatability, limited colour deviation of the printers (no need to change the printhead) and an extremely short ink stabilisation time on the paper," explained Herve Schwertz of GMG France.

"GMG and Epson are working hand in hand to develop contract proofing systems.

Because of the quality of its solutions, Epson sees GMG Color as a strategic partner," he continued.

Diego Jannelli commented: "Before we started using Colorproof, we couldn't obtain the required level of quality or maintain consistency and balance between different proofs.

We saw immediate benefits as soon as we deployed the GMG system, right from the first installations several years ago, initially with the Iris printers and now with Epson." According to Jannelli, Colorproof's strengths are the stable calibration of the output devices and the possibility of using standard colour profiles (ISO or ECI) or copying the profiles (colour rendering) of the printers' machines.

"GMG has gradually become a benchmark in the collaborative chain with the printers.

With access to profiles validated by the printer, we are protected from unpleasant surprises and the client is satisfied," he pointed out.

For catalogue printing, HGS mainly uses the ECI (European Colour Initiative) validated gravure color space included in Colorproof, or the printers' specific ICC profiles.

When clients want to reprint using offset presses, HGS uses the ISO offset curves in Colorproof o4.

"I always advise my clients to use recognised standards such as ECI or ISO to optimise the consistency and quality of rendering," added Jannelli.

HGS has also purchased GMG's colour space conversion software Colorserver.

"In my opinion, this is the most powerful software currently available on the graphics market for converting colour spaces to CMYK.

We obtain magnificent rendering and use it to convert gravure-produced catalogues," said Jannelli.

"To be able to deliver optimum quality, the installation of top of the range GMG Colorproof software has to be coupled with the know-how of pre-press professionals.

We can get the most out of the system because we have been using digital printers for over 10 years.

The offer of higher quality doesn't merely depend on the availability of the software, but also on the updating of the product and software maintenance to retain the repeatability of the chromatic rendering, amongst other things," he explained.

GMG said that the use of Colorproof has led to a noticeable increase in productivity at HGS, as well as providing a tool for making the pre-press process uniform over all client products.

"Using such reliable technology as Colorproof has encouraged client loyalty," concluded Diego Jannelli.

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