GAMUT: Idealliance Printing & Packaging Podcast

44: European Adoption of G7 Specifications & Methods

December 17, 2019 Idealliance Season 1 Episode 44
GAMUT: Idealliance Printing & Packaging Podcast
44: European Adoption of G7 Specifications & Methods
Show Notes Transcript

Niall Coady of MPX Colour based in London presents a compelling case for G7 near-neutral specifications in a global print and packaging supply chain. Niall discusses recent experiences in Europe working with major brands, premedia companies, and printers that clearly make a case for G7 gray balance aims and methods. Niall was at the forefront of color management back in the early days, working with Dan Caldwell and Franz Herbert, two pioneers of ICC color management. MPX has been involved with Colour Management, RIPs, and PDF Workflows since the dawn of Digital Colour management in the ’90s. By working with leading brands, agencies, printers, key technologies, and partners, MPX solves complex production challenges that make media workflows more consistent and efficient. 

Guest: Niall Coady, Managing Director, MPX Colour.

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spk_0:   0:03
So here's the question. In the printing packaging supply chain, how do we deliver new ideas and innovative practices to continually improve your profit, your brand and your quality? Welcome to the gamut podcast and I am your host. Jeff Collins, director of Print Technologies for I D. Alliance. We are a non profit global think tank serving a graphic communications industry with 12 office is strategically located around the world. To better support our membership, you can support the gamut podcast and content like this by becoming a member, it idea lines by going to www dot idee alliance dot org's. I'd like to Thank our sponsor can in U. S. A. They provide industry leading production and large format printing solutions supported by exceptional professional service offerings. On today's gamut podcast. We have the pleasure of speaking with Nile Cody and for those that don't know who Nile is. He was at the forefront of color management back in the early days around the early nineties and now work with Dan Caldwell and France Herbert. They're often referred to finally as the fathers of icy see color management, and Nile is now the managing director of N. P. X color, based in the U. K and N P X, is involved with color management rips. PDF Work flows and they work with leading brands, agencies, printers, key technologies and partners working to solve complex production challenges through the printing packaging supply chain to make media work flows more consistent, more accurate and more efficient. Nile Great to have you on the gamut podcasts and how are you today?

spk_1:   1:50
I'm very good, Jeff. Thank you very much. Appreciate it,

spk_0:   1:53
Nile. Great to have you on. And today I wanted to start off and ask you, Since you work in the UK and Europe, but primarily in the UK, I was hoping to find out what the current state there is for us print service providers and brands and the adoption of new things like, Well, not so new for G seven, but also new things like E. C. G. And we see a greater adoption and people are definitely taken. The dive Thio take on these new process is definitely G seven's been here for a while and the states as well as other parts of the world. But what's happening with G seven and E. C. G. Their extended color gamut in the U. K. Can you give us an idea what's going on?

spk_1:   2:46
Sure, the people that I'm dealing with here and packaging and primarily in labels. They're actually really excited about the fact that, for instance, a good press can reproduce 66% off all Pantone color is under a devotee of 2.22 point five on. That's very exciting for them because they could do a quote, a quote unquote more with four, it's easier for them to control. A CG does have a few mechanical oddities as well. That makes things a little hard to control on the press, so they like to stick would seem like a if they're going to use a fixed palate approach to print on dhe. I'm getting Maura traction on the ground with that right now and using Color Logic Zebra on its prediction functions for Pantone. I'm seeing a lot of that now. People really excited and wanting to use that technology. A Saint Maur with four. Yeah, rather than looking at E. C. J on the large form. Outside of things, we are working with a large wealth on an enormous company of the international company that is a print management company. They're working on behalf of one particular large brand on dhe. They've asked me to do some work with a multitude of different suppliers. That air point of sale. Now my name is Cody. I am might as well be while Bill or Buffalo Bill Cody, because the Wild West is what I would class the large format market to be. You know, the different rips. The very complicated workflow is the different printing technologies themselves, Inc substrates. I mean, Jesus. I've been into a place where the substrate stacked on top of each other looked like a collage of colors. It was unbelievable

spk_0:   4:17
I can't imagine and just walking in tow where they store their their roles and the different substrates it's boggles the mind how they keep track of all the different uh, substrates.

spk_1:   4:32
I've got the answer for you, though. Jeff get the three. Answer is G seven because, of course, G seven doesn't have a paper it doesn't have an ink on. Does you know, I I'm not preaching about it. I really be honest with you. I'm very impressed with G seven. It's I've known Don Hutchinson since ah, 2002 or something and never really touched on the subject with him. But sitting down and having a bit of time with Ron Ellis was very, very useful for me. And I immediately saw the light, if you will, on dumb the The way it was explained was not the way it has been explained to me in the past. And I saw immediately all the pitfalls in how ah fog ra implement implementation. Well, it's not bad, but certainly, you know, the pitfalls of that type of implementation in at least in the offset and the digital took type of environment. Um, but I just you know, I really do believe that in the P. O s side of the business that G seven is the key And the answer. I've literally been on four sites since I did my training with this large print of management company and doing presentations and practical demonstrations of how G seven works using Bruce Baines spot on technology and using developed ins curve technology. Um, and of course, color logic as well. The man Thorsten has got the math down for G seven paths as far as I'm concerned on, I've been showing the the independently showing these people have this works. And actually, this morning I got my first purchase order for ah, large on very well known point of sale company in the north of England And who pushed the button on an ongoing G seven on the big brand for the big print management company to be educated and perhaps to convince that G seven is the way to go here in the UK as well as, well, literally their company and every other country in the world on De. So you know, things look good for G seven in the UK on, I think for perhaps, ah, I might be able to solve this Wild West issue with G seven.

spk_0:   6:32
And now you recently finished the G seven experts certification course there in Brussels, Belgium, and Ron Ellis was the instructor. And, um, I know that you know G seven, uh, even prior to taking the certification course, but it sounds like the light bulb went on during the course. And what was it about the course that really turned that light ball born?

spk_1:   6:57
I think the thing that light bulb went on when I when I saw a picture that Don had of his grandfather in a grandfather was looked like a magistrate In the course on DI the Theory journal picture may be faded or whatever. They had a little gray scale in the bottom left hand side, and he had just simply neutralized that gray and the color came into, you know, came into focus, if you will in the picture, The idea in my mind waas very clear that you get the gray and the color will follow. So just little anecdotes to come out of me from time to time on Guy was you know, I really sort of at that point I just saw Well, you know, I can recon really see this happening because I'd spend the last sort of year or so working with this big print management company. We'd implemented some technology from X rayed co color shirt. I don't know if you're aware of it for this particular brand and the way that they want to do interact with all of their clients. It went on to be very good software, but one thing I really noticed in that software, of course, is that we wanted to start have a quality control for Gray. All right, now, when I was going through the presentation with wrong, which was really, really interesting, he said one thing that really clicked with me and it said, Look, you know, I could have the best doc in the world on any instrument. Um, you know, on my offset press on, I could have the dog came perfect. And I can have the end points of the color. Perfect. But for some reason, I don't seem to get the gray on. Of course, Andi, he says the reason for that, of course, is that the methodology in the fog our approach does not account for, uh or indeed should I say I shouldn't say the Fokker afford broach. I mean, in the actual physical standards elf TV I 24 72 It doesn't talk about the trap of the inks and how the Yanks trapped together. And, of course, in POS for May, I was working on you ve life the press, right? So you ve is gonna trap very differently to the standard offset. So the light bulb just went on at that point, and I could see why we were failing all the grays and why things were really, really not coming into play. So the 1st 1 I literally I been back a couple of days from Belgium and the training I literally had gone to, uh, Rick have maker Crow Mix and said right, I needed set of your software there, and I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna give this a shot. I'll walk down to that site. I walked up to that side, and within about three hours we had his press calibrated, and there on set their food. Jeon said, digital machine calibrated. I had to put the digital silk. We were working on silk paper just for the sake of doing the test. I had to put the digital paper over the offset, and it was such a good match. The decline just couldn't believe what he was saying. I mean, he'd never seen that. I mean, as you can imagine on UV offset and for digital application, we'd use the profiles and we get the great pretty good. You know what I'm saying? But never without a profile had he seen a great balance or neutral balance on it kind of clicked for him to things like, Well, I said to him, Look, we could take advantage of the full gamut of the press. We could, Ah, the digital press, that is, by balancing the gray and just not having a profile in place. Or you could have a profile in place if you wanted to use, for instance, G seven targeted or the color space type of approach. I started to explain this, and he started to get very interested in it, and I could see that light bulbs were going on in his head as well on for me. Look, I'm purely I don't I don't have AA degree in color science. I've just been doing this for so long that if I wasn't good at it, I might as well just go home now. So I'm very practical in the way I implement technologies is the point that I'm trying to make on dhe when I see a client get us excited as I am about it, about the results of a system in place, I know that we're onto a winner. So that's it. It's results driven scenario and other thing that was said in my conversations with Ron, which I loved was the fact that this is a printer's tool and I've noticed this. I've been on four sites and I've seen old printers, every single one of them going, Yes, I can see the results. This is the first time anybody's come in with color management. I'm not bored to death. Bored, bored me to death or show me something that I didn't agree with and, you know, literally we were walking off the presses with things that were well in neutrally balanced, and they were really, really pleased with what they were saying. So light bulbs went on for May. Okay, and I don't go off intention too much here, but, like books are also going off with my clients, and that's when I know something is really good. There's there are a lot of complexities, and I've worked in the industry before in process control. So we and on heat setting cold, said Webb presses. So I mean, this is going back a few years now, but, uh, I know what it's like to be in an environment where it's almost impossible to control what's happening on the press on I'm also very familiar with all of the suppliers of the Yanks and the papers and the found solutions and everything that every time they walk into the client, the first thing they're going to say is I'm going to save you money and time and ink and all these things. And they never actually are able to do that where technology is like, well, ink savings and G seven and things that these technologies actually were capable of actually saving money, Um, you know, and actually delivering some results of I've known a few the feel of the old G seven guys there for quite a few years. I mean, people like Dave Hunter and so on. I've spent some time with those guys and and Matt Fain and a few other guys that are in this sort of us industry on we all agreed the same thing that you know, that the technologies for software actually consume ways, sometimes be overlooked in terms of being very effective in saving these people money and time and actually, you know, putting together their work clothes.

spk_0:   12:33
Matt, I know you've been doing this quite some time, and I know your background But for our listeners. Why don't you tell us how you got started in color management? Where when did it all begin for you?

spk_1:   12:44
I have been as I said, you know, before Jeff, I've been doing this a number of years. My first. In fact, it was a mistake that I even got into color management. I'll be honest. You know, here I was working with a company, just that the cusp of, you know, the plates going digital. I was involved with the company that was E U Z implementing digital proofing solutions for clients using color copiers. And I was Ellen install installing the system, using a particular type of rip on the client. From the proof the client said to me, Why doesn't this proof match at the time an analog Kremlin? Are you familiar with what an analog Kremlin is? Oh,

spk_0:   13:28
yeah, Kremlin's. And we used to do a lot of match prints, a couple places that worked, but yeah,

spk_1:   13:35
Dan Caldwell, uh, used to refer Thio Britain as Cromelin Island believe everybody believed that that was the case. And of course, you know, I think everybody was quite sort of Yeah, they were. They were quite focused on these standards at the time. And when I say standards, everything in the UK from the UK print on dhe graphics industry is focused on the proof on dhe. Therein lies a bit of a rub, actually, because, um, that's one thing I like about G seven is that has the potential to pull us away from a proofing system as being the God of all of this and actually looking at controlling the print environments. More specifically, I just have never believed in. The fact that we have, like a £3000 proofing printer is essentially driving, you know, oppress. That's worth a few 1,000,000. I just don't see the logic in that

spk_0:   14:28
almost definitely doesn't make too much sense there is. But, you know, on the other hand, it's not, uh, economical to try to prove for on a $3 million press, the cost is out of astronomical. But, you know, with ink jet targeting a press condition so we have it the right way, you know, not the cart before the horse, like before, when we were trying to force a press to print enforcer around packages square all to match you know ah di sub proofing solution like a Kremlin or match point. Remember trying to, you know, push TV I numbers or dot gain around on those match prints that match the press and the press to the match print. It was just messy all around. But now we have, you know, the digital side of things. We're able to proof on the digital presses very quickly. And, like you had mentioned G seven, you know, applied to inject wide format solutions. You can take advantage of the dynamic range, the wider color gamut. And so you're not dumbing the capability down to a smaller gamut, like a one off set or some of the analog systems. So there's no again coming back, Thio that core fundamental of good, great balance if we apply it properly to inject digital across all these different technologies. Now we have, you know, ah, universal way of achieving a similar visual appearance. Good tone ality, good image, reproduction. That's similar because we're using the same great balance. Sam's

spk_1:   16:10
Yeah, I like the idea of the universal data set. So the universal digital data set and having a common color gamut, that's ah lot larger, of course, than any girl. In my opinion, achievable color gamut on a digital press that I've had some samples of that sent over. It's Ah, yeah, it looks quite good. I mean, it's certainly an approach. The problem. Of course, we all are going to run into it. One point is, once we start making changes here again, coming back to Cromelin Island, Yeah, yeah. Ah, the fact is is that we have to get the stakeholders in the graphic graphic arts chain to adopt these standards to adopt these profiles in their usage on this is this is this is an interesting sort of scenario because that's the biggest problem in the UK at the moment is that I mean literally everything is based on a fog data set which is called 39 in factor of fog or a 39 l meaning it was wth e i t. 87.4 patch set that was used to make that particular characterization of that data for that profile s Oh, that's that seems to be sort of the de facto standard here in the U. K of you ask anybody, and every assumption is that a fogger 39. Proof is essentially, you know, the golden Holy Grail of off color here in the point of sale market. Like you say, what's happening is is that there are certain people that are waking up to the fact that actually there dumbing down their work too much that most digital presses and I used the excellent Fuji on set as an example, I've got a huge, massive color gamut by comparison, can produce a lot of Pantone's in fact, over 80% under a delta of to a really, really fantastic machine. That particular machine there. If you're converting all of your your files to a 39 l call fogger 39 l standard. You're basically dumbing down your color. You're not taking advantage of what you could be taking advantage of in terms of saturated, more chromatic colors. So you know these air things again from the G seven perspective that I quite like the fact that you know, I can neutrally balance a bunch of presses, and then I could have native output for that if we were to put a universal data set. But in front of that, we could actually take advantage of the full gamut of these presses, which would be brilliant. But we're not losing anything in terms of consistency, because consistency is as far as I'm concerned. Gray gray ramp, great balance. And that's where G seven comes in. And as I say, you know, I'm very, very much a believer now that this is a way forward. Were

spk_0:   18:36
you able to stay after the G seven certification course that attend the brand que seminar that I'm going to give a shout out here toe? Alyn Waller, who coordinated all of the course, is there. He's our director for idea Lions Europe, and he had set up the brand cute seminar with Coast spec toe and mark verb. Ast and Ron did that seminar. Ron Ellis. Were you able to stay for that?

spk_1:   19:03
In fact, that was brought up. In fact, they were doing a Brian kuh session there in Belgium. I didn't go. I couldn't I had some business to do back in the UK, but because I worked with some brands here on behalf of other companies, it's a very interesting prospect for me and something that I've discussed with Alan Waller on something I will be engaging with very, very short. Let's just put it this way that the first European Brian Que, uh, session as you had to be agreed. So I I don't know when that's going to happen. Mind you, I've never been a stranger for for going over to the U. S. I love it. So perhaps I'll goto one of the sessions over there, but I can see how it ties in quite nicely. Actually, you know, the brand que side of things. I could see how it ties into the G seven expert qualification on how very, very useful. Here in the UK, I've just found in the UK that there's been very little independent direction when it comes to this type of work. So, for instance, one of the great things is if I sit down and have a conversation with the number of people, they won't. They won't understand basic concept like Delta T, for instance, and yet they would use that phrase in their conversation across the table, and they would be talking about Delta e of one and the del de of this and that and the other a CZ, you know, as you know, this. There's different formulae when it comes to Delta E. And so you know it's it's a minefield. They don't understand the difference between lt 76 94 2000 You know there's no understanding of how these things when we're talking about difference on actually, and I read somewhere. Actually, that Delta, he means Delta's difference. But E stands for a word that I cannot pronounce in German. It's in funding or something like this, which essentially means sensation on de. So it's a difference in Sensation. Yeah, that s o They're very interesting that they talk about that. I often say that in my my when I'm talking to people, I say, Look, it's actually a difference in sensation, so you can just imagine this is all about feelings and sensations have said, you know me for me, For one, I said, I have my problem. Problem with my feelings. And of course, everybody laughs. But you know when you're talking about color, the problem is, is a a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. So what I found overriding thing here is that with most experts that work for brands, what they do is they will come in, and they will almost use this small about amount of information to be people up and make people feel bad. And I've seen with press management tools, for instance, used in the war in the workplace where something is only good of its 99%. Do you understand what I'm saying? So you've got a press tool there when they read the color bar, your Fanta. Everybody is 99%. They're all doing great. Yet, if you, for instance, were to read that color bar with other technologies, you might be getting 45% if you get my meaning. So I'm going to be less true. I've found most of the brand's chasing that dream, so everything is 99%. Everybody's gotta hit that. When a client is trying to reproduce work, they're getting these really high scores on these scoring systems on the work looks nothing like the proof and it, you know, complete He doesn't match. So there's a huge reliance on Delta and numbers and not enough reliance on what you are describing there with with regards to Hey, there's a cast on this and I want to get rid of that casket. I want to match the actual physical proof that I've got my hand. So education wise? Yes, I think they're open to education, Jeff. But in very many cases, they require a little bit of coaxing a little bit of proof, if you will, because again, coming back to one thing I said earlier is that all the manufacturers are out there saying Hey, buy our products because they'll give you the lowest lt besting savings and the best savings here, there and everywhere there. Confused because everybody is telling them that they're going to get the best thing since sliced bread for, you know, everything that they purchase. And yet they're not able to achieve that, and it becomes confusing for them. So without rolling on, it's just, you know, that's what it is. It's theme, a little bit of information they'll beat people up over that information won't quite understand what they're asking people to actually reproduce, and in many cases, the education that I would independently provide is I would say, these are your parameters, Guys, this is the method of print that we have here. This is what you can actually achieve on this better to print. And this is what we would expect to be adrift between the different sites that we want to work with. What you know.

spk_0:   23:24
Now I know you have to run for today. You're busy, guy. And so we'll go ahead and bring this to an end and I'll let you get going again. So much appreciate you spending the time here, and we're going to have another conversation with you shortly in the near future. So look forward to doing that with you and take care

spk_1:   23:46
yourself as well. Jeff. Thanks very much for your time. Appreciate it.

spk_0:   23:49
You got it, man. Take care. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to the gamut podcast. If you have ideas, suggestions or would like to join us or even sponsor future podcast, simply email me at J. Collins and idea lines dot org's. That's J C O L L i n s at idea lines dot award take care and have a productive day