Alwan’s CMYK Optimiser is more than earning its keep at Blackmore Press in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
It has improved quality (on uncoated stocks in particular), produced ink savings that will reach £15,000 in a year and reduced turnaround times through cutting drying times. “This is because less ink is being used,” says director of marketing and sales David Bland. “We’ve just printed the cover for a car brochure on Arctic’s Munken paper, which is notoriously difficult, and it was dry within a day.
“We are always pushing on the quality and the environment side, and what we have done with Alwan helps both – it gives us better quality on difficult materials and it saves a substantial amount of ink on each job.” The company is registered with FSC and PEFC and has the ISo 14001 certificate. It is now aiming to achieve Emas recognition, becoming one of the few UK printers with this certificate.
As well as sheetfed printing, where Blackmore has added a five-colour and coater Lithrone S40 this year and sister company Lamport Gilbert in Reading has installed a B2 Komori LS29-5, the company has a niche in coldset printing, producing local newspapers. These have been requiring more and more colour and the quality impact of using CMYK Optimiser has been welcomed, with many compliments received says Bland.
“The Lighthouse arts centre in Poole is also a customer which had been disappointed when it moved from silks to uncoated papers. We applied the Alwan technology with startling results,” he continues. The customer added a comment to the brochure that Blackmore printed to promote the application to the effect that “Blackmore, by using their image optimisation, have been able to brighten and sharpen our images and our latest brochure produced on the same uncoated stoock has been a marked improvement with bright, sharp and detailed images that really jump from the page.”
The software examines each image on the page, applying an optimal level of grey component removal, using black to replace areas where coverage of the colour inks is heavy. It will also sharpen images. “We have done a lot of testing to find the optimal settings for sharpening and image and spent a lot of time profiling the press we are using it on,” says Bland. Papers also have to be profiled, some falling outside the parameters of the ISO colour standard that Blackmore works to, so require individual profiles. “We work with a wide range of paper. We can also make improvements on coated papers and we still achieve the paper savings of course,” he continues.
Ink savings can very from 14-25% depending on the image content and paper used on a job. The software is used at the proofing and the plate imaging stage. The company will run the full process each time there is a correction to be made, even when text only is corrected, which is just about the only constraint Bland says. Plates are imaged on Screen platesetters.
Greater use of black ink also provides better control over neutrals, and much greater detail in shadow areas. Says Bland: “We have just printed a prestige watch magazine where there were a lot of what I call black on black images, where because of the Alwan software we can hold a lot of shadow detail.”
The software was supplied by Colour Engine, UK distributor of Alwan’s colour expertise suite of applications for colour management and compliance to ISO 12647-2. On the coldset side the group runs three Solna web presses with B2 and B1 five-colour Speedmasters alongside the new Lithrone and a Ryobi 75.
Greater use of black ink also provides better control over neutrals, and much greater detail in shadow areas. Says director of marketing and sales David Bland: “We have just printed a prestige watch magazine where there were a lot of what I call black on black images, where because of the Alwan software we can hold a lot of shadow detail.”
