How Smart Color Control Became Colortech’s Competitive Advantage

Professional color management is critically important to the success and longevity of a print service provider (PSP). When asked how important good color really is, Kerry Moloney, senior product marketing manager at Fiery, says that for PSPs that don’t invest in their color, the consequences can include reduced quality and wasted materials, and even jeopardize a business’s lifeline: its customers.

“If you don't have professional color management or you don’t use it properly, you’re going to introduce problems,” she says. “Big problems like waste, lost customers, and a loss of reputation.” It’s important to note that color management isn’t just about achieving great results on a single day, and then forgetting about it. It’s about attaining those great results consistently over time — and that’s where color control comes in.

One of the reasons poor color control puts a PSP at risk is because of the importance of brand colors. Take, for example, Colortech Inc., a printing, mailing, and fulfillment company based in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. It works with clients that have very specific color needs and if they’re not met, they could risk losing a job.

“We have a lot of high-end customers who really care about print quality and their branding, color consistency, and hitting PANTONE colors,” Nick Fay, digital manager at Colortech, explains. “They come to us because we really focus on color and quality, and we’ve invested in maintaining that.”

However, that wasn’t always the case for Colortech. There was a time it faced consistency challenges and it needed a solution.

“Because of some color consistency challenges reported from our in-line measurement instruments; we needed to reject a lot of prints,” Fay says. “Plus, we were spending way too much time staring at sheets and making manual adjustments in order to maintain color consistency.”

That’s when it turned to Fiery.

Tapping Into the 6 Cs

In the early 2000s, the “Cs of Color Management” were developed. The Cs are the vital steps that are part of the print color management process. Moloney explains that while the list of Cs at one time consisted of three, that number has grown now to six: consistency; calibration; characterization; conversion; control; and conformance.

The Fiery 6 Cs of color management

Control – the task of maintaining the color quality that has been achieved – is especially vital to the color management process, and is greatly benefited by intelligent color control tools. One tool that is particularly useful is Fiery ColorGuard, a cloud-based solution that allows PSPs to schedule verifications and recalibrations to keep color in check.

“‘Schedule’ is an important word here,” Moloney says. “‘Control’ as a formal step, is a fairly recent concept. People just used to randomly recalibrate or verify results. But, if it's only done on an ad hoc basis, people might forget to do it, or they may not do it often enough to ensure their prints are accurate. Conversely, they might do it too often and waste time and materials with unnecessary recalibrations.”

Colortech noted this is one of the reasons it turned to ColorGuard as a color control solution. When it implemented the tool for use with two of its Konica Minolta digital devices of different ages, it created custom output profiles for each device. It then scheduled daily verifications to ensure color didn’t drift. Fay explains that the verifications give Colortech the confidence that it will be able to replicate its color day after day. Benchmark verification also provides tolerances Colortech can hit. Fay points out, “Getting there would take you a lot longer without these tools.”

“We have both presses set up on a schedule to run verifications every morning before we even arrive at the office,” he says. “We only recalibrate when an engine fails its benchmark verification to bring it back to the desired state. The inline measurement instrument makes recalibration easy too. It’s basically an automated 30-second process that requires no operator intervention.”

Enabling Control and More

Not only does ColorGuard take over the responsibility of scheduling a verification from an operator, it also provides PSPs with:

• Automated Notifications: These notifications keep production staff updated on color verification statuses so they can focus fully on color quality.
• Compliance Measures: ColorGuard helps PSPs achieve and provide color compliance; meet industry color standards and custom house standards; and benchmark goals.
• Analytics: PSPs can gain color production insights to track trends and improve color quality performance over time.

At first, it might seem intimidating for a PSP that is new to the idea of color control. But with ColorGuard’s Verification Setup Assistant, PSPs are guided through the setup process where they can set things such as their verification goals, geographical location, print application, G7 usage, and white point preference; making the setup process fast and straightforward.

In terms of ease-of-use, integration, and automation, ColorGuard is unmatched. It is integrated into Fiery Command WorkStation so operators don’t need to step out of the Fiery production workspace to action color control tasks.

“There are other tools out there that are independent. But integration is a vital component to automation and ease-of-use,” Moloney says. “Many ColorGuard functions are part of Fiery Command WorkStation. That means that when you're doing your daily production, you get an alert that says, ‘It's time to recalibrate.’ So integration matters, because it means people don't have to step outside their regular production workspace to initiate those vital verification and recalibration tasks.”

The dynamic Fiery duo: Fiery Color Profiler Suite and Fiery ColorGuard

With ColorGuard, PSPs can also be confident about hitting brand colors accurately and efficiently. Moloney explains that other solutions on the market only take care of process colors, but ColorGuard is the only solution that addresses spot colors as well.

“Brand colors are very important to the people who buy print,” she says. “ColorGuard looks after spot colors in the same scheduled way as process colors. … We schedule the key spot colors that a PSP works with and make sure they are checked, reported on, and corrected if they're not right.”

If access to scheduling, easy setup, intuitive integration, and hitting spot colors wasn’t already a selling point for ColorGuard, then automation in a time of ongoing labor challenges is.

“We automate as many steps as we possibly can in the color control process, so that a human doesn't have to remember to do it, action it, and do it properly,” Moloney says.

Doing it properly and in as few steps as possible is one of the biggest benefits that Fay sees as well. He estimates the team saves approximately 20 minutes for each operator and machine per day with ColorGuard. He says Colortech saves time by doing fewer test prints, proofs, and color curve edits.

“I think of ColorGuard as an insurance policy,” he says.