Dr Kai Lankinen is something of an evangelist for extended gamut printing. The Finnish consultant has banged the drum for the technique for two decades pointing out its economic and ecological benefits. OEE can be improved by 36% and carbon footprint reduced by up to 36% his website announces. This is entirely dependent on the print technology used, the substrates and the implementation, but the general rule holds: printing with up to seven colours is good for the bottom line and good for the green bottom line.
It works because out of gamut spot colours can be reproduced when the colour gamut is enlarged beyond CMYK by using orange, green and violet inks as additional primaries and there is therefore no need to wash up between jobs with the waste of inks, substrate and consumables that follows. And it works regardless of the print technology used: whether gravure, litho or flexo.
Digital is already using fixed palette printing because spot colours are either not feasible or not possible in digital printing.
Lankinen explains: “When you go to brand owners and talk about ECG, they say it hasn’t worked because it is not possible to hit their brand colours. But then you ask the brand owner would they use digital print. The answer is ‘Yes, digital printing is great’. Then you point out the lack of spot colours and ask again about ECG and the answer is still ‘No’.”
This indicates a lack of knowledge and an information gap that is holding back packaging print and printers. If brands are resistant, then converters will stick with spot colours and will not take advantage of the gains that are possible. It requires brand, printer and suppliers to come together, perhaps with a consultant, to implement the solution that works for all. That of course takes time and commitment. He points out that the support from the company’s board, perhaps inspired by the strong ROI that is possible, is necessary. It needs profiling of press, substrates and consumables, it means explanation and reassurance for customers and may mean a shift in culture for the business itself.
Consequently relatively few businesses have adopted ECG, something that Lankinen puts down to a lack of a Reason To Change. In other words, many think that adopting ECG is too risky and that any pressure on profits or working methods is not enough to propel them to change. “But as the pressure to be more productive and to reduce impacts will become more pressing, the sooner that companies make the change, the sooner they will reap the ROI benefits. This can be in the next half-year or the next five years,” he says.
Companies in faster growing markets, say in Asia or South Africa can make decisions and begin implementation within weeks, he says, while others in Europe for example, can be looking at it for 18-24 months and still not have reached a conclusion.
The reluctance to change is built on some hard experience – perhaps from a generation ago when bespoke tools like Opaltone (adding RGB colours to CMY) and Hexachrome, in which Pantone added an orange and green ink to reduce dependency on spot colours. The problems with cost of inks, ink formulations, press engineering and colour controls outweighed any benefits and neither took off.
“Companies that tried it and failed felt they might have looked stupid and don’t want to look stupid again. But it’s like electric vehicles: 20 years ago nobody was buying EV, the range wasn’t there. Today anybody buying a new car has to consider EV. It is the same with ECG.
“The theory is good but 20 years ago it did not work because the tolerances were too large. Today inks are made to totally different recipes, ink transfer is better, flexo plates have a micro surface structure thanks to laser ablation, we have better software to make colour separations and presses are now servo powered. And there is better information available to designers even where they don’t understand much about ECG,” he says. The rise of digital printing, though only taking a minute share of the overall market, is another important driver.
A first step into the expanded gamut world might be to switch from standard CMYK to XCMYK where the four process colours are enhanced with pigment heavy inks. These expand the gamut beyond the Fogra 51 levels, akin to the high saturation inks that can be used on Fujifilm’s Jetpress 750 B2 inkjet press to expand the four colour gamut.
When colours remain out of gamut the next step is to add the additional three primaries in an ECG set up. The Pareto principle applies, says Lankinen. “Use ECG for 80% of the spot colours and use hybrid printing where ECG and spot colours are used for the remaining 20% of colours that remain out of reach.”
Looking ahead new brands are less likely to be as precious about the brand colours than those that grew up in the PMS era and will work with fewer if any spot colours. But they still want stand out on the shelf or in the consumer’s hand. “CMYK alone is not enough to achieve the bright tones that the brands wish to use,” he says. He demonstrate this with a graphic that shows brand colours are clustered in the orange, green and violet colour areas, beyond the reach of four process colours. “There are certain colours that simply do not live in this colour gamut,” says Lankinen.
It is not just new brands that have moved away from spot colours. Famously packets of Walker’s Crisps are printed from four process colours only having managed to migrate from spot colours to six colours and now four colours only without a consumer backlash.
This is not possible for most legacy brands where ECG will play an increasing role. The understanding of colour and creation of separations is crucial. Not all separations are created equal even when the same applications, GMG, Hybrid Software (ColorLogic), Esko are used. There are more ways to hit the desired colour and companies need to be aware of impacts on other areas of the artwork.
Lankinen also punctures a prevailing view that once set up, a press has to be dedicated to ECG. This is not the case. Printers can start with single jobs, building to a morning or a day a week running ECG as demand and confidence grows. Setting a target for the number of jobs to be converted to ECG within the next six months or a year can help.
The savings start with just two ECG jobs that follow each other without the need for wash ups between them. Then a company might dedicate a day to printing like this. “It is wrong to say that you need a 100% dedicated press for this,” says the evangelist. “It’s simply not true. Jobs that have previously been uneconomic can become the most profitable that a company has because they no longer have the cost of wash ups. I know it works.”
