Wide Format Printing Solutions.
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An Introduction to Digital Colour Management
What is digital colour management?
Predictable colour reproduction is essential for anyone involved with design and digital imaging. We have been working in this field for many years and you can benefit from this knowledge through the products we offer and the consultancy we provide. We can fine tune your digital imaging systems so that they work in harmony to provide the level of colour certainty you need.
Why bother with colour management?
If you would like to:
- possess a reliable and accurate colour reproduction process from original to monitor to any printing device?
- be able to predict on your monitor or desktop printer how another printing device (such as an offset printer) would print your images?
Then please read on or just contact us.
Every input device like a scanner or digital camera ‘sees’ colours differently and different monitors display colours differently. When you try to print out a digital image it seems that no printer behaves the same: even when they are the same make and model they behave differently. As a result most printers will print colour differently if they do not use a custom calibration, if we are use a printer with the genuine inks and papers supplied by the manufacturer we still might not get the best results, using so called generic profiles (usually supplied with the printer driver which came with your printer on CD), in terms of colour rendering, colour balance, maximum colour gamut, neutral greyscale. Of course, if we are using a third party ink and / or paper, it is even more important that we use custom made profiles.
The costs and the benefits
Colour reproduction can be a costly and time-consuming process. However, by installing an automatically calibrated colour reproduction workflow, you can obtain reliable colour digital imaging and save a lot of time and money - especially on all those test prints that end up in the bin! We can calibrate and profile any digital input and output devices including digital cameras, scanners, monitors (including flat panel TFT screens), and all printers including desktop inkjet printers, laser printers, even offset printers. If necessary we can profile printers and scanners without even visiting your office (Remote Profiling).
Your choice… If you want to fine-tune your whole system then we recommend our implementation service we visit your premises and carry out all necessary works. Alternatively, should you only need to profile printers and scanners, you may choose our remote profiling service . We recommend that you purchase a software package with a colour-measuring device specifically for calibrating your monitor. Please note that calibration and profiling is only worthwhile when you use quality equipment and inks. Send us an email describing your equipment and we will advise you what is possible and send a quotation.
Read more about the aim of digital colour management.
So what else do we do?
Wide Format Printers - we can supply the professional Wide Format printers at a very reasonable price that includes our support. Here is the price list. With the introduction of the Epson 4000, making the choice between a small desktop printer and a professional Wide Format printer became much easier: A professional build printer slightly more than double the price of a desktop printer, but with running costs much lower.
Software Rip's - after having tested around 10 Rip's available on the market, we decided to sell Colorbyte's Image Print Rip and Shiraz: Two different packages for two applications. Our advice will depend on your needs and the type of work you need to print. In short: Shiraz is one of the most accurate proofing Rip's available on the market. Colorbyte is in our view a Rip more designed having the photographer in mind. Yes, these packages do not come cheap, but if you would like to save time (and time is money!), get a more even sheen on Gloss and Semi Gloss papers, Black & White prints with hardly any metamerism and extreme accurate proofs, you might consider bying one of these Rip's
.
Ink and Media - Having tested many different paper and ink combinations over the last few years, we can give you sound advice regarding which paper and ink combinations work well and which ones you should avoid. Slow drying papers or fast drying? Dye-based ink or pigment based ink? Which paper and ink combinations work best?
Inkjet Media
Large Format Inkjet Ink
