By Simon Eccles

‘We can do the same.’ That’s the usual reaction of rival suppliers to the range of colour standardisation software developed by Alwan Color Expertise. But CEO Elie Khoury argues forcibly that Alwan colour products are actually unique because of their range of functions, automation, and ease of use. This view is endorsed by colour consultants from all over the world, who are recommending Alwan systems to publishers and printers who report they are now getting consistent, predictable colour while cutting time and costs.

The core function of the Alwan color technology is to automatically and dynamically adjust the colour space and separation for each image and page within any PDF supplied to a printer or repro house, resulting in printable images that are much easier to set up on the press, give better-looking results and can save considerable ink and paper costs due to less wastage. The predictability and consistency of results is particularly important to printers worldwide who are implementing the ISO 12647 family of colour printing standards, which are emerging as a key selling point to clients as well as boosting efficiency within the print room. In mainland Europe this is known as PSO, BVDM’s Process Standard Offset.

The three major products are: CMYK Optimizer, which automatically optimises colour for press; PDF Standardizer, which combines CMYK Optimizer with Enfocus PitStop server and FullSwitch to automatically check and correct PDF contents as well as the colour; and PRINT Standardizer, which works with any press-side auto-scanning device to read the actual printing conditions and automatically feeds back dynamic TVI correction curves to prepress to keep the jobs within the ISO 12647 specification.

‘Our products have been all designed to serve standardisation’ says Mr Khoury. ‘They are particularly suited for PSO implementation, and we believe our approach is unique. Alwan’s colour standardization software check incoming data and correct dynamically what needs to be, only when necessary. Other software packages correct all incoming files with a predefined color conversion using Device or DeviceLink Profiles, even if these files have different requirements, or even if they were originally compliant to the output process, which is an aberration. All our products offer automated Quality Control, Correction and Reporting features which are the foundations of any ISO Quality Assurance or PSO implementation. We control the data received, we correct only what is not in conformance, and we report the accomplished tasks for traceability and quality assurance. Other systems basically apply predefined corrections on incoming files, without any preflight, control of conformance or reporting.’

‘I feel that Alwan users can work very well with ICC profiles, because of the automatic detection of the profile and dynamic transformation,’ says Supree Thongpetch, of Colour Doctor in Bangkok, Thailand. ‘There are a lot of tools to do ICC transformations, but nothing else does it Dynamically like Alwan’

Paul Sherfield, who runs The Missing Horse consultancy in the UK, agrees: ‘I believe that Alwan CMYK Optimizer is the best colour server on the market, mainly because of its dynamic device links technology,’ he says.

‘There is nothing else like CMYK Optimizer,’ confirms Menno Mooij of ISI Publishing in the Netherlands, another consultancy in the Netherlands. ‘We had some customers who needed to go to ISO 12647 but had problems with TAC, also text and linework. We saw a solution in CMYK Optimizer four years ago and since then we have sold 60, either ourselves or through dealers in Belgium and the Netherlands.’

Alwan Dynamic Device links

The key technology that’s central to all the Alwan colour software is called Dynamic Device links. The software reads incoming PDF documents supplied by clients to printers or pre-press houses, it detects each photograph, object and each colour page in the document and analyses their colour as well as print characteristics. In particular it detects any ICC profile associated with each image and object, the Total Area Coverage (TAC) which ultimately controls the amount of ink used to print it on the press as well as the GCR level which has an impact on print quality and stability. Each image and page content is automatically assessed and individually re-processed to give a consistent ink weight and colour on the press. The Alwan software then applies a new CMYK profile which can be a Standard ISO/PSO profile, or tailored to the target press.

This level of automation and flexibility is unique to the Alwan systems. It means that all incoming files can be automatically checked and corrected into an ISO-standard print-ready form by simply dropping them virtually into a single hot folder.

Mr Sherfield explains that ‘CMYK Optimizer was one of the first of these systems to appear and since then it has become bigger and more sophisticated. Others jumped in but most of them only stressed ink saving. Too much GCR can mess up flesh tones and lose the gloss of the print, but Alwan applies the appropriate amount to each image individually.’

He adds that ‘CMYK-CMYK conversions are the biggest issue for dealing with legacy CMYK files. You can do this in Photoshop, but it’s not so good for the purpose. Normally a device link needs to be set up for each case. But Alwan’s system is so clever that it recognises each incoming image profiles and builds a link dynamically for each one.

‘Nothing else does this. With other systems you need separate device link software and it can take 10 to 15 minutes to build a new link, for each image!...’

Implementing PSO (Process Standard Offset)

The problems that Alwan addresses can be significant. ‘An audit conducted in 2008 by KEE Consultants in several printing sites showed that operators can spend two to eight hours a day correcting native and PDF files,’ Mr Khoury says. ‘Our audit also showed that CTP curves were rarely updated, most of time wrong. Even in PSO or ISO 9000 certified printing plants, CTP curves were not updated since the certification audit, even though operators had the manual tools to do so! We felt then that we had to do something about it’

Mr Thongpetch says that ‘There is a problem in PSO, which is how to maintain ISO quality on every job. Not all printers can manage this. So we needed a solution that can help control and maintain the quality automatically. With KEE Consultants, we set up a service that can be delivered worldwide in order to provide, not just ISO 12647-2 conformance, but PSO conformance too. We are covering the entire process from end to end, and to succeed that, we need automated and reliable solutions.

PSO in PrePress

Menno Mooij says: ‘in many cases printers use uncoated papers but they are supplied with files separated for coated papers. 98% of incoming files are color managed for coated paper, but some of our customers print 70% of their work on uncoated, so they must be converted. Once they standardise their production, we can convert incoming CMYK from coated to uncoated paper separation with higher GCR levels: Before ISO printing and Alwan technology, this was very difficult to achieve.’

Supree Thongpetch adds: ‘it is true that CMYK Optimizer handles TAC, GCR and CMYK-CMYK conversions very well. However, this on its own is not sufficient for PSO in prepress. The answer is PDF Standardizer. This allows the print service provider to check whether incoming PDFs are compliant with the PDF/X standard and to optimise CMYK separations as well. If a files does not comply to PDF/X1-a or to IS0 12647, PDF Standardizer can fix it.’

PSO in the pressroom

‘Printers tend to run with low CMY ink densities because they are afraid of drying and smudging problems if they increase densities. when print quality is poor, they tend to throw the problem back to the repro guys, without knowing what the cause is’ says Menno Mooij. With CMYK Optimizer, there are no more drying and smudging problems, and print quality is significantly improved and stable.

The benefits are not just in quality, which is not always easy to sell, but in productivity too, Mr Thongpetch says. He recently did a comparative study on an 8,000 run magazine with 11 signatures, printed on a KBA 105 sheet-fed press.

‘Done conventionally this took 780 minutes of make-ready in total, and 610 minutes to print’ he says. ‘So make-ready time was longer than production time. This is not industrial nor profitable printing. When we implemented PSO and PRINT Standardizer, make-ready fell to 360 minutes and production took just 404 minutes. So the total press time was less than the old make-ready time alone.

ROI for conventional printing

Mr Thongpetch continues: ‘This means that implementing PSO can double productivity and save the price of a new press! When printers ask me ‘is it just about colour quality?’ I can say no, it’s all about productivity!’ If they invest €50,000 for PSO software, an auto-scanning instrument and some training, I need to be able to give them a good argument for what they will get out of it. It is productivity that counts: after we get them running to PSO they do not need to spend another €1 million on a new press. That’s a very good return on investment!’

Menno Mooij points out that using the Alwan products can mean a significant return on investment, often within few months. ‘If you turn over €1 million and spend €300,000 on consumables, then a 20% saving on waste reduction is €60,000, with an investment that can be as low as €10,000 sometimes.

‘One of our four year old customers have spent € 7000 on Alwan software at that time. They produce 600 to 800 plates per day. If a prepress operator does not use CMYK Optimizer for any reason, he can be sure that the press minder will notice it and come to him half an hour later to ask him what happened and why the files were not optimized with CMYK Optimizer!

ROI for Digital Printing

GCR can save ink, but that’s not a very big issue for offset printers outside newspapers and large web offset companies, Mr Mooij points out. ‘However for large format inkjet printers, ink represents a much higher percentage of production costs – it’s liquid gold! It’s easy to save 20% of ink costs in large format, and this might amount to €30,000 or much more savings every year.’