11.10.2015
ColorGATE now presents Colorrizer: a new process-optimized coloration software program for industrial digital printing. With Colorrizer, the design and collection development is already done in the working color space of the digital production system so that the process-dependent printer gamuts are taken into account and fully exploited directly in the design process. This procedure optimizes the process from the design to the digital industrial printing production and leads to significant production time and cost savings.
Digital printing methods are now being used more and more frequently in textile printing as well as in the print production of products for interior design, such as curtains, furniture fabrics, rugs, wallpaper and bedding (homeware), to enable smaller print runs and shorter run lengths with changing designs. Approximately 90% of the wall and floor tiles currently produced in Europe already take advantage of digital ceramic printing today. Digital production printing systems are also used increasingly frequently for the decoration of wood and wood-like substrates for the surfaces of furniture and flooring, such as parquet.
For these applications, the new Colorrizer coloration software is able to generate color-ways with a color-accurate preview on the monitor (soft proof) and step-and-repeat patterns. It also simplifies the work and coordination process for everyone involved in the development of the design – from the client to the designer and right on up to the digital printer.
Colorrizer provides designers with highly precise, powerful coloration software, which already defines the appropriate, i.e. maximum, color space for the printing systems used in each production process during the design creation process, e.g. via the import of PDS files from Adobe Photoshop. This also includes an automatic color transformation, which automatically converts colors outside of the color space selected into the best-possible corresponding color within the available color space. It is also possible to import existing color books from Adobe ACB files as well as color data from conventional printing processes, e.g. 1- or 8-bit data, to transfer the color or to assign new colors. Thus, the designer is able to fully exploit the color space available in the production process and any complicated adjustments of the design to the production color space at a later date are avoided.
Colorrizer makes soft proofing, i.e. the evaluation of the design’s color trueness on the monitor, very convenient and reliable. In addition to these color-accurate previews on the monitor, it is also possible to print proofs valid for production on paper with sister product Productionserver from ColorGATE, so that the days of “flying color-blind” in design production are over. Furthermore, this RIP and color-management software makes it possible to compare different color spaces, so that the printing results on different printing systems or print results using alternative ink combinations can be simulated. This puts an end to the time-consuming, annoying process of trial and error in the color matching required between the designer and the print producer.
Colorized textile designs or color samples, e.g. of tile or wood surfaces, can be printed on paper to save time and money, while still retaining the same color appearance as the final printed product so that suitable design alternatives can be presented to the client and other potential buyers.
Color-accurate multi-channel coloration – “on-the-fly”. In defining color recipes, Colorrizer allows manual changes so that the optimal color results are always achieved, even when different production processes or materials are used. Thus, other process-dependent coloration characteristics, such as the total color quantity for a desired print through, can be taken into account. Each tonal value per color channel can be altered manually or completely suppressed to reduce the number of color separations, for example. In this way, it is possible to optimally align products in terms of their color appearance as well as their functional properties per production technology.
Defining explicit color recipes and their specification in the LAB color model also make it possible to leave designs in a uniform color look-and-feel even when they are used with different production processes, on different materials/substrates or with different func-tions. As a result, all the designs remain uniformly matched to one another, which plays an important role in professional interior design, for example. Colors relevant to branding or corporate identity can be specified reliably and reproduced across different products.
In addition to the color management and soft proof functions, Colorrizer also generates pattern repeats, also known as step-and-repeat patterns. The repeat patterns in production width are generated in Colorrizer, whereby drops can also be used. This data is then processed by the RIP software, e.g. Productionserver, lengthwise down to the last pixel. The printing file created is relatively small and suitable for production purposes, which enhances the productivity of the printing process and simplifies the work of the digital print producer (external or in-house). In addition, output lengths and widths can be freely defined and the output resolution directly adjusted to the digital printing system to be used.
Colorrizer is ColorGATE’s latest addition to its software portfolio for digital industrial printing, which provides, in combination with e.g. Ceramic, Décor and Textile Productionserver and the Rapid Spectro Cube (RSC), a full-range solution offer with color management, RIP software and a color measurement device.
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