IDEAlliance Launches G7 Website, www.g7global.org

ALEXANDRIA, VA—August 11, 2008—IDEAlliance today announced that it has launched a new website to provide G7 information and news for the growing G7 community around the world. The new website contains a new Q&A as well as new materials about the ISO inks that are recommended for implementing G7 on sheetfed offset presses.

Background

The development of G7 was prompted by print buyers who were frustrated by proofs and prints that had matching dot gain but clear visual differences. Print buyers asked for metrics that more closely relate to the visual appearance of a printed image. For buyers it is critical that there is a visual appearance similarity of no matter where their work was printed across the globe or on any kind print device. Their goal was to achieve a similar visual appearance for their marketing collateral, magazine and newspaper ads, packaging and signage. G7 provided the new metrics of neutrality and tonality upon which a similar visual appearance can be based.

The basics of G7 were developed by its inventor Don Hutcheson, Hutchcolor LLC. Hutcheson granted to IDEAlliance intellectual property rights, free-of-charge, for all non-commercial purposes, including the right to publish IDEAlliance specifications based on this intellectual property, the right to develop and deliver training materials based on the IP, and the right to use the intellectual property as the basis for IDEAlliance programs. Hutcheson and a team from the IDEAlliance GRACoL® Committee refined the process controls defining visual similarity and G7 was first published as an IDEAlliance specification in 2007. Today, because of its broad application beyond sheetfed offset printing, G7 is advanced and maintained by the IDEAlliance Print Properties and Colorimetrics Working Group.

www.g7global.org

Since G7 was initially developed by the IDEAlliance GRACoL Working Group, G7 materials have been posted on the GRACoL website. As the volume of resources about G7 grew, it became difficult to sort out G7 materials from materials specific to GRACoL. In addition the co-location of G7 with GRACoL lead to the commonly held misconception that G7 is the same as GRACoL.