Ricoh is preparing to launch a technology which will make colour matching, colour accuracy and colour consistency much easier to achieve.
The Auto Colour Adjuster was announced in Japan in September last year and has more recently been made available in North America. European availability will surely not be far behind.
The Auto Colour Adjuster is a device which measures two prints from a particular machine, one a test target, the second the image that has to be matched in terms of colour. An array of spectrophotometric devices and software combine to create an ICC profile of the printer and paper.
The profile is created far faster than previous methods of creating a calibrated profile and without the skill that is necessary to create accurate ICC profiles.
The system will deliver consistent colour across time and space, that is to match a job that was printed months or years previously and perhaps by litho rather than digital technology. And it will enable a printer to spread a job across multiple machines which have each been profiled to deliver colour accurate output.
In a blog published on its US site, Ricoh claims that the Auto Colour Adjuster “changes the game entirely” and that it is “a game changer for the printing industry”.
Most colour correction will focus on achieving accuracy for a spot colour by adjusting tone curves which can leave the rest of the image unbalanced. Working with an ICC profile using spectrophotographic data delivers a more accurate reproduction of the original where one colour has to be mapped to what the press is capable of printing.
Ricoh says there are three immediate benefits: precise colour matching; rapid colour adjustment; improved management and verification against known colour standards such as ISO or Fogra.
Ricoh’s US director of colour management Toby Saalfield says: “The time it takes to manually adjust press colour to print buyer’s demands quickly ruins all profitability, but with Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster, [print shops] can finally take on those ‘impossible’ jobs they’ve always tried to avoid. No trial and error. No blocking precious press time to troubleshoot. No colour expert required. Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster makes it easy to get the colour you want.”
Ricoh is not alone in tightening colour management for its digital presses. Konica Minolta arguably led the way with the IQ501 device which analyses and corrects for colour and registration on the fly, and is able to match across different machines. However, this is an in press technology which can slow printing speeds whereas the Ricoh approach removes that from the press.
