Wide Format Imaging

Wide-format personnel sometimes joke about almost mystical events involved to migrate precise color from a brochure to a banner or trade-show graphic. Even though everyone can tell a story where magic or luck seemed to be involved, most people know color consistency involves attention to color management, maintenance, and processes.

"It's the process, not the equipment," said Rex Jobe, chairman and CEO of The Color Place, Dallas, TX. "Your UV inks will lay down on a hard substrate different than a solid ink will lay down on a canvas piece. You've got a whole variety of different issues that you have to deal with trying to match. That's where you have to take a reading as to what that output device will give you and then you try to match the color match and the color profiles to produce the colors you want."

Consistent Color Isn't an Accident

It's skill more than magic in the fingers of those in pre-press or the traffic cops in the digital workflow who prep a file so colors are accurately reproduced or sense when "something isn't right" with a run.

"We do printing for clients throughout the US, and I guess our biggest benefit we try to deliver to the client is that consistency," said Randy Crow, president of Source One Digital, Muskegon, MI. "Obviously, that takes good file prep up front. Also, it takes very good pre-flight technicians pre-flighting the file and most of all, the profiles that need to be built for your specific machines that you're running and the media you're running."

Jim Freed, Source One's vice president of digital services, says they regularly use spectrophotometer, colorimeter, and International Color Consortium (ICC) profiles and calibrate the machines for the media used regularly in-house.