Color Excellence in digital backlit printing
Since many years Andre Schwarz solves customer’s most critical color problems in digital printing. One of the challenges is to print true colors for backlit applications. Andre, how do you help to achieve color excellence?
André Schwarz:
We are in 2021 and from my experience there are still many customers out there not knowing how bad they are actually printing and what is possible with their equipment.
In Backlit printing it is still quite common to just use a frontlit profile and print double-strike.
So just „abuse“ a single strike profile and double the amount of ink you lay down on the material.
In the final application, so with a back light, the results are „usable“ and as the currant situation in the market proofs even salable. I still come to shops, sometimes even very big shops, printing for big brands working like this. But this workaround is far away from what is possible. And I don’t even want to talk about color accuracy at this point.
The Barbieri measurement devices are able to create backlit profiles. Meaning you are able to measure the targets with a back light to kind of simulate the final application, for example a light box.
When I am at a customer to create profiles I always ask to print a „reference“ with their common settings first. After profiling we print the same file again using the profile we just created. And it is interesting to see how printshop owner react when they see the dedicated backlit profile compared to their old settings.
They start to realize which kind of quality they actually delivered over the past years without even knowing.
The dedicated backlit profiles deliver a higher and better image quality, more accurate colors, neutral greys and – which is especially for backlit prints important – a strong and deep black.
Instead of just printing the double amount of ink to compensate for the light you put behind the material we have full control over the ink we lay down in backlit profiling. A Barbieri measurement device enables you to measure the ink limit and linearization charts in transmission (so backlit mode). That allows to identify the perfect ink limits settings. In most of the cases this results in huge ink saving.
In average a dedicated backlit profile saves 25 to 40% of ink compared to the old settings. In some cases it is even more.
So you deliver a better, more accurate, more stable quality and save ink – so money – with every print.
Depending on the printer it is sometimes not even necessary to print double strike any more.
So it is possible to increase, „even double“ the print speed and still benefit from all the points mentioned before.
Profiling is no rocket science. Never was, but the last couple of years most RIP-softwares out there implemented a straight forward and easy profiling wizard to their software.
So profiling is actually quite easy!
You just need professional, reliable, state of the art measurement equipment which supports the challenges you face in the large format printing industry.
That is the reason why I working with Barbieri equipment for nearly 15 years now.
That enables me to help customers to archive color excellence.
Thank you, Andre. Critical color issues in backlit printing require measurement technology. This ensures color accuracy and increases the efficiency. Now it’s your turn to become top performer in digital printing with Barbieri technology.
