GMG and Farb seminar demystifies colour

Ramesh Kejriwal of Parksons Packaging, in his opening remarks said, “Standardisation of colour is a huge challenge.” He stated how Parksons Packaging has been deploying GMG systems across its six plants in India and on various machine lines in the same factory. 

Kejriwal endorsed GMG as a proven tool to guarantee extended gamut printing and a globally guaranteed technology for global brands. He mentioned that the arrangement with the software company was based on "the trust and relationship that we had built up with GMG over the years we had been dealing with them." He signed off, "Once you are getting a consistent quality of print to a set standard it enables a packaging converter to attract more clients and do a lot more for building the brand."

After which, Simone Viscomi, channel sales manager at GMG Color spoke about how brand owners use colour to increase brand awareness and the perceived value of their products. Brands imply a promise to the consumer that quality remains the same whenever the product is purchased. Managing the colour of a global brand is strategically important and demanding. He added, "It’s more important than ever that proofs and plates are produced accurately. Any problems on press result in wasted materials and lost time on expensive machinery. Clients rightly demand consistent, high standards – anything less just won’t do." He also spoke about the importance of colour profiling and proofing.

Simone Viscomi, channel sales manager at GMG

Steven Accou, who is the senior solution architect at GMG said, "73% of purchasing decisions are made in-store. And since brands are global, the colours need to be the same. Since colour boosts brand recognition by 80%." In this sense, he mentioned, "The mission of a proofing system is to create accurate predictions, not pretty pictures."

Steven Accou, senior solution architect at GMG

Accou highlighted the OpenColor software in his presentation. He explained how to create OpenColor control strip alongside a colour chart that can be used for press fingerprints. He mentioned how with the OpenColor software, an X-Rite SpectroEye spectrometer, and Epson proofer anyone can perform the colour readings - and build an accurate CMYK colour profile.

He spoke about flexibility with a 'fixed palette' option. The option enables the user to simulate spot colour inks out of CMYK inks. Accou mentioned, "This is possible by using the PPP Fusion imaging and plate technology to expand the colour gamut of CMYK to levels never achieved before. We can offer our customers cost and efficiency savings by reducing the number of plates required. Using our in-the-round sleeve technology combined with our Fusion offering, we can offer our clients something very special." Representatives of two pre-press houses who were present in the audience said that this could augur a new era in flexography.

Using a case study, Steven Accou said, "A single spot colour ink may vary only in density, causing minimal shift. A CMYK overprint can vary, causing huge hue and saturation shift. CMYK-OGV uses only nearest 2-3 colorants causing minimal hue shift."

Afsal Kottal, the managing director of Farb Technologies, along with his team members Damodaran Das and Vineesh Kumar engaged with the delegates about the power of contract proofing as well as how to deploy spot colours and Pantone colours for different processes.

During the open discussion towards the end, what emerged was, there are some surprisingly down-to-earth things that one can do to get in control of colour reproduction.

As a delegate, Nitin Apte of Technomec pointed out that one of the first things to do is to identify what the most common problems are, what causes them, and what can be done to address them. He said, "In most cases I’d say that one quarter of problems are with the files supplied, another quarter is the choice of the substrate, and half the problems are with process control." We agree with Nitin Apte.