Margie Dana

A chronic headache shared by print customers worldwide has to do with color: Will their printed materials match the printer’s proof – and will they match their color expectations? This is a loaded question. No other print production issue can generate such angst and anger on both sides of the table.

It’s a topic that’s interested me ever since I asked a question on a print buyer survey: Is your printer’s color management expertise important to you? Nearly 99% of the respondents claimed it’s either extremely important (59.9%) or important (38.8%).

The follow-up survey question is even more telling: If color management is important or extremely important, do you select a print vendor based on (color) certification? The options given were G7, FOGRA, and GRACoL. They could also write in other answers.

Over 61% of buyers surveyed reported that they do not require printers to be certified. Despite the fact that 99% feel that color management is important, most print customers trust their own eye – or their pressmen’s eyes – for good color.

What do you make of this? Why aren’t buyers flocking to certified printers?

Then recently, I learned about a new approach to print certification. It was developed by RIT (Rochester of Technology, well known globally as a premier institution for studying printing and other graphic arts). RIT was working on this because there was recognition in the International Standards community that what the industry had (for color certification) was not enough.

I learned that the International Standard Organization was creating a new standard for color conformance – color conformance to datasets. I decided to write about RIT’s approach because I found out that the draft international standard on which it is based was approved on January 7^th by ISO. It is now an official International Standard.

This new certification is known as PSA^sm. And although it truly seems like a print customer’s Public Service Announcement (“Great news about color management: Solve your problems with PSA!”), it stands for Printing Standards Audit.

PSA certification is a “rigorous, objective process for assessing a printer’s ability to operate a standards-compliant workflow.” To better understand what this means for print customers, I contacted Professor Bob Chung, one of the RIT professors who was pivotal in developing the PSA assessment criteria.

Color conformance to datasets is what sets PSA apart from other certifications. Datasets are the DNA of a printing workflow. They define printed colors. They unify the workflow. They’re what’s behind an ICC profile. If you’re in printing, you know that the ICC profile defines color input, characterizes the printer’s color gamut, and helps you get the correct color reproduction from input device to output device.

Though print customers are probably completely unaware of it, conformance to datasets is what they’re looking for when they get something printed. What they really care about is whether the printed colors match the specs. Datasets are what help printers get there.

PSA certification means a printer can match a substrate-corrected dataset of 1617 individual colors – all colors in the ICC profile dataset, including many complex mixtures. The result, for print customers, is repeatable and predictable color.

According to RIT, PSA certification builds on the certification processes you are already familiar with and takes them to the next level. With 1617 colors in the dataset, it can ensure that color specs can be accurately matched with process colors.

If you agree that your printer’s color management expertise is important and that printing certification to dataset is an effective way to assess a printer’s ability to manage color, then you might want to take a closer look at PSA.

What do you think? I’d love comments from print customers and printers alike. Does PSA certification seem like something you’ve been searching for?

For more information on PSA, please visit http://printlab.rit.edu/services/psa/ or better yet, click on this link and watch a short video explaining the kind of problems that PSA technology can solve for you: http://youtu.be/-Y2kwwJTaiI.

Marny Ashburne

January 13, 2014 at 10:08 am

Interesting video. I’ll check out the website too.

This might be topic for another day, but where I run into the most frustration is before we get to press. I feel the printers have a good handle on printing to match a proof. Before then, I’m reviewing design proofs on my computer–either the monitor or an office laser printer. The difference in color between them and what the designer envisions can be dramatic and has led to client dissatisfaction with the finished product. It doesn’t look anything like what they saw in proofs (because of location, I review print proofs, not the client). I know my equipment can be corrected, but in an office environment, where what I do is a small portion of what everyone else does on their computers, it’s just not going to happen.

Anyone else have this problem?

Gina Canter

January 13, 2014 at 1:48 pm

This is just another way to form a bureaucracy that will cost the printers more money. Most litho printers, who have been in business and survived the digital transition, have been struggling to keep up with new technology on a (seems like) daily basis. If your printer has competent people in pre-press and on press, a PMS book and a reliable Ink company, you should be able to match your specified PMS colors, and make your photos and other color builds look the way your print buyer wants them to look. It’s overkill to form some new bureaucratic standard that is so unnecessary. What’s next…another bureaucracy to make the paper mfrs. meet color standards so the PSA (or whatever) can charge more for the membership? We will eventually have fewer and fewer printers to choose from if we continue down this road. The smaller the choice the higher the price is how it usually works.