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28 Q U I C K P R I N T I N G / N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4 w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m ogy likes a 'tooth' in the sheet." A certain degree of porosity or rough surface for- mation is needed for the ink particles to "grab onto." Color Management: Another Gray Area Historically, color management was like the old joke: everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it. Color management has been one of the most talked-about yet under- implemented production processes. In inkjet, though, it is absolutely essen- tial to generate color profiles, and keep the press calibrated—and even re-profiled and recalibrated every so often. "In the inkjet space, you have no choice [but to manage color]," said CSA's Dol- lard. "If any printer out there is contem- plating inkjet, they've got to really look long and hard at how they are managing their color." "Color profiling is important today, and a lot more important than it used to be, mostly because commercial printers are looking to gain as much efficiency as they can," said Stephen Sanker, global marketing group director, Strategic Mar- keting and Product Planning Production Ink jet Systems, Fujifilm. In four-color offset printing, it was common practice to run hundreds of sheets of makeready alone. "Today, that just doesn't seem to be acceptable." Fujifilm's J Press 540W is a high-speed inkjet web press, comple- mented by the J Press 700, a cut-sheet inkjet press. The promise of digital printing from the beginning was the elimination of makeready—something that effective col- or profiling obviates. And the technology, after all, has evolved. "Color profiling in general has improved," said Sanker. "We're not even running a proof any- more today. You want to get it as close as you possibly can, and developing a color profile is very important." "The benefit [of color profiling] is that it qualifies what the desired result is in the long run, and allows you to apply those best practices and apply those standards as part of the production process," Sanker added. "So when the media changes or the printing conditions change, you have a profile you can apply that has already been established that you can apply to that particular process." Profiling also has to be more thorough than perhaps a lot of shops are used to. "Everybody thinks you just profile this paper and this ink," said Schilling. "That's great, but you also have to make sure you do it for low coverage, medium coverage, and high-coverage." It's also tempting to think that if you are only doing something like transac- tional printing, you don't need to worry about color management. As long as the numbers are clear on a statement or bill, all's well that prints well, right? Actually, transactional—and its offspring transpromotional—printing can also present color challenges. "You're taking a logo—the AT&T; blue and orange, the Marriott maroon—you're taking those colors, their brand which they identify with, and you have to reproduce them at certain specifications," said Dollard. "If I'm Fidelity, American Express, or Capital One, I'm very picky about what my logo looks like. We still see a need for color management on the transactional side." The Fifth Element One of the key reasons that color man- agement is important in inkjet printing is that the paper plays more of a role in overall color than in arguably any other printing process. Some even consider paper "the fifth process color." "The paper determines the potential color gamut," said Kodak's Wozniak. "If you have a paper that is optimized for inkjet—like a NewPage TrueJet Classic, which has a very large color gamut— you're going to be able to print a lot of colors on that paper. Spot color match- ing can [also] be a lot easier on a large- gamut paper." "Color is very dependent upon the sub- strates and some of the settings that are used to manage ink consumption," said Xerox's Graupman. "To have a good set of color tools is, we believe, valuable to our customers." The White Stuff Today, not everyone is doing what is called "white paper in," where the blank roll is fed into the machine and both static and variable content is printed in one fell swoop. Although that will likely become the standard, there is still a substantial amount of inkjet imprint- ing taking place, which either involves re-running offset-printed shells through an inkjet press to add small bits of vari- able content, or installing inkjet heads on an offset press to create an offset/digital hybrid. The imprinting approach doesn't fall prey to many of the traditional chal- lenges of inkjet printing because you are not printing large areas or solids on a full web. "Imprinting is much more forgiving," said Kodak's Wozniak. "Typically, you're not mixing or blending colors as often. Every once in a while you'll have a gradient or something, but most of the time there is less ink to evaporate off the sheet." Kodak's S-Series inkjet printheads can be installed on an offset press, and Kodak works with customers to provide spot colors—such as specific Pantone colors—and custom-mixed specialty col- ors. "It's just printing red with a single color, not mixing yellow and magenta. So there's half the ink to deal with, gener- ally," said Wozniak. A Cut Above The majority of production inkjet units out in the market are predominantly continuous-feed, but as more and more cut-sheet units appear, do they present any particular challenges? "There is a wider variety of media in the cut-sheet space," said Dollard. CSA's cut-sheet inkjet press Niagara is still in development and testing, with the first installations slated for the end of this year. "In a continuous-feed environment, I might run 10 different papers all year long. In a cut-sheet environment, I might run that in a single day. So you've got to build in something that allows you to accept a wider variety of media." H Two Oh! Production inkjet is not—and was not intended to be—a direct replacement for offset printing, or even toner-based print- ing, in the sense that one inkjet machine will replace X number of other machines. Although many inkjet systems are touted for their versatility, ultimately they are acquired to handle specific markets and applications—transactional, books, direct mail. This distinction especially needs to be taken into account when looking at paper. How an ink performs on a given paper will determine what you can print, and print effectively. It's also vital to understand the limitations of inkjet. And also remember that inkjet ink is water—and as such will not behave like offset ink. ◗◗ Continued from page 15 Drops On Demand: Making Water Work With Inkjet Ink Inks