New edition of ISOCoatedV2 in M1 in sight?

Even almost 9 years after the introduction of the successor colour space PSOCoatedV3, ISOCoatedV2 / FOGRA39 is still the most widespread colour space in Europe. We at Proof GmbH count around 200 jobs from time to time for the German Printing and Media Industries Federation, among others. In the last count, proofs in ISOCoatedV2 accounted for around 68% of all proof jobs at our company. This is a clear sign of the continued widespread use of the colour space. ISOCoatedV2: From the classic colour space to the beacon of the …

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Proof GmbH Tübingen Fogra Certification FOGRA55 7C Matthias Betz examines 7C test form

We passed the first proof certification for the 7C proof under FOGRA55

A few days ago Proof GmbH was the first company to be certified for proofing for the new 7C exchange colour space FOGRA55. Fogra has developed characterisation data for extended multicolour printing with the printing colours CMYKOGV – i.e. cyan, magenta, yellow, black (contrast), orange, green and violet – FOGRA55 as part of a research project over the past few years. The characterisation data and the ICC profile Ref-ECG-CMYKOGV_FOGRA55_TAC300.icc have been published on the Fogra website in recent weeks. We have now carried out the certification via GMG ColorProof, as …

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Video by Peter Jäger Pro2Media: 3 minutes for simple cross-media color management

Cross-media colour management really works

Peter Jäger is an expert in colour management that reliably works across the boundaries of printers and monitors, web and print – essentially: cross-media.

Current Proof Standards 2024

Offset and Newsprint ISO Coated v2 (ECI) / ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) Profile: ISOcoated_v2_eci.icc Standard for glossy and matte coated paper Paper: Types 1 and 2, gloss and matte coated Tone value increase curves A (CMY) and B (K) as defined in ISO 12647-2:2004 Characterisation Data: FOGRA39L ISOUncoated Profile: ISOUncoated.icc Standard for uncoated white natural paper Paper: paper grade 4, uncoated white offset, dot gain curves C (CMY) and D (K) from ISO 12647-2: 2004 Characterisation Data: FOGRA29L PSOCoatedV3 / Fogra 51 Profile: PSOcoated_v3.icc The successor of ISOCoatedV2 for glossy …

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Offset film lamination with matt or glossy OPP film of a print according to Fogra51 PSO Coated V3

Publication of Fogra 56/57 for Glossy and Matte Film Lamination of PSOCoatedV3 Prints

A few days ago Fogra published the characterisation data for the new printing standards Fogra56 and Fogra57 while ECI provided the respective ICC profiles for download on the eci.org website. FOGRA56 and FOGRA57 are the separation and printing standards for matte and glossy film lamination of “PSO Coated v3” / Fogra51 prints. At Proof.de, with regard to the two predecessor standards Fogra49 and Fogra50 for glossy and matte film lamination of ISOCoatedV2 / Fogra39 prints, the majority of inquiries were for the standard for matte film lamination only, as this …

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DeviceLink PDF Colour Conversion

DeviceLink PDF Colour Conversions for Ads

We have recently started offering DeviceLink colour conversions via DeviceLinks made by ColorLogic from numerous RGB and CMYK standards into other CMYK standards from offset and gravure printing.

DeviceLink PDF Colour Conversion

Optimised colour conversion between different printing standards

The colour conversion profiles preserve the separation structure, limit the total colour application for the selected printing standard and maintain the purity of the primary and secondary colours. They ensure smooth transitions in gradients and enable correct conversion of PDF and PDF/X data. Separation-preserving conversion ensures that pure grey tones are not built up into four colours and that duplex tones (black+primary colour) and triplex tones (black+secondary colour) remain pure, while still being colour-metrically transformed in the best possible way. In addition, the colour impression of the source colour space is optimally preserved in the target colour space by taking into account both paper colouration and dot gain.

Limitation of Total Allocation of Colour (TAC)

For current printing standards of ISO, Fogra, ECI, Ifra, Gravure (PSR), Gracol, Swop, SNAP, these profiles ensure a targeted limitation of the maximum ink application without completely new separation. This reliably prevents problems with set-off and improves the drying behaviour. These profiles are suitable if the data is generally already in the desired colour space, but individual images or objects have too much ink application.

You can order the Devicelink PDF colour conversions for advertisements here

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Gamut map: The colour tool for cross-media design

Due to our involvement with freeColour e.V., at the last meeting in Switzerland the desire for a cross-media tool for designers was expressed with which one can create intersections of colourspaces from the freieFarbe CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL. With Gamutmap, Proof GmbH has now created such a tool, which is available to all designers free of charge. With Gamutmap nearly 100 individual colour spaces can be indicated from 34.250 colours of the entire CIELAB colour space, or intersections from many combined colour spaces can be indicated. An example: As …

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Look back: Fogra Color Management Symposium 2020

The 7th Fogra Color Management Symposium was held in Munich from February 12 to 13, 2020, to which I was invited as a speaker for the area of proofing in Session 6. I reported on our tests in proofing for the Fogra58-Beta-Textile-RGB Standard for textile digital printing. The Fogra Color Management Symposium is one of the events in the field of colour management and brings together scientists and users from all over the world for a two-day exchange of ideas in Munich. A total of 21 speakers and 7 moderators …

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Good times: The general meeting 2019 of freieFarbe e.V. in Switzerland

After the association freieFarbe e.V. had met last year in Tübingen for their annual general meeting, this year we met in a rustic hut in the Appenzeller Land, which Peter Jäger from pre2media and Eric A. Soder from pixsource.com had excellently chosen, just like the sunny weather that should accompany us from Friday to Sunday.

freieFarbe e.V. Mitgliederversammlung 2019: Unsere Unterkunft in den schweizer Bergen
freieFarbe e.V. general meeting 2019: Our accommodation in the Swiss mountains

The chairman of the association, Holger Everding from DTP Studio Oldenburg and Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin arrived in Tübingen on Thursday, and after a first long night full of discussions and a meeting in the Proof.de office on Friday morning around noon, the three of us continued our journey to Switzerland. After a joint dinner with Peter Jäger and Eric A. Soder (from Tübingen, we had taken some Swabian potato salad and my handmade Maultaschen with us the evening before), an evening full of planning and a strategy workshop for the tasks and goals of the next year began. Without question, this evening was also spent discussing, developing, laughing and working creatively until late into the night between Flensburger Pils, Swiss mountain beer and wine in attractive red and light yellow shades.

Ausschnitt der Ergebnisse des freieFarbe Kreativworkshops am Freitag Abend mit Gewichtungen (blaue Aufkleber) und Zuständigkeiten (Namenskürzel)
Part of the results of the freieFarbe creative workshop on Friday evening with importance (blue stickers) and responsibilities (name abbreviation)

After breakfast, we continued on Saturday to swissQprint, where we had the opportunity to learn more about the status quo of large format digital printing from association member Guy Flüeli, as well as visit the production facilities and conduct print tests on the Karibu and other SwissQPrint presses.

Jahreshauptversammlung freieFarbe e.V. 2019 in der Schweiz
from left to right: Matteo Baschera, Jan-Peter Homann, Matthias Betz, Holger Everding, Eric A. Soder, Martin Spaar, Peter Jäger, Michael Jakobi. It is missing: Kai-Uwe Behrmann, Jan Seguda, Guy Flüeli (photo)

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Convert PANTONE colours optimally into CMYK. Practical aspects to the new old discussion.

A very frequent topic for us in the area of proofing is the optimal conversion of PANTONE colours in CMYK for classic, inexpensive four-colour printing. In the last few days, there has been a lively discussion on this topic in the Adobe Forum and in the colour management forum of hilfdirselbst.ch, which I would like to summarise briefly, as our customers often struggle with the same issues. PANTONE and the PANTONE CMYK values from Bridge: The Problem The central question is to which standard or colour profile a CMYK value …

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Which proof profile for corrugated plastic posters and election posters?

As is well known, elections are always around the corner, and the trend towards ever larger and more numerous election posters is unbroken. In the past, only Mother Nature made the landscapes colourful in spring, but today every local, state, federal and European election does so easily. Every candidate, every large or small party now has the technical and financial means to transform entire streets into a colourful sea of messages and faces. Once the photographer has captured the election candidates well in the studio, the pictures go off for …

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eciCMYK profile available for proofing

Today we have activated the exchange colour space eciCMYK, Fogra53 for proofing and integrated it into the online shop of proofing.de for ordering. eciCMYK is the colour space for CMYK print production and complements the other Fogra colour spaces, but in contrast to these it does not represent a specific printing process, but is rather “neutral CMYK”. Due to the large gamut of eciCMYK all classical printing processes can be represented, it can be proofed on modern proofing systems without any problems and corresponds in its characteristics to typical CMYK …

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HLC Colour Atlas XL - freieFarbe proof.de - title white 2018 v1

free colour: CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL published and can be ordered at proof.de

After almost a year of work the time has finally come. The CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL saw the light of day. The new HLC Colour Atlas XL is the basis for all stages of professional colour communication – from design to the finished product. The standard version contains 2040, the new XL version even 13283 mathematically-systematically graded CIELAB colour tones on 74 pages. You can order the CIELAB HLC colour atlas here in our shop The free file package contains the layer PDF version with several gamuts for the analysis …

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DIN SPEC 16699 - Open colour communication - Final meeting - Berlin

DIN SPEC 16699 “Open colour communication” published

A few days ago, our DIN SPEC 16699 “Open Colour Communication” was published and is now available for free download from DIN’s Beuth-Verlag. Matthias Betz from Proof GmbH, Holger Everding from DTP Studio Oldenburg, Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin and Eric. A Soder from Pixsource in Switzerland, all members of the association freieFarbe e.V., have shown in the bilingual DIN specification a way to create high-precision color samples on the basis of open source, license-free standards and have shown ways for cross-media color communication. The 44-page PDF is …

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How CMYK and RGB profiles are handled in proofing

When we receive a file from you, the first thing we check is whether there are colours other than CMYK in the file. If the file is built exclusively in CMYK, it will be sent directly for proofing.

Handling wrong profiles with CMYK data / “Profile Mismatch
If we have only received CMYK data from you, we will ignore all input and output profiles and only use the CMYK values that we bring to the ordered output colour space.

Example 1: Data in ISOCoated, proof in ISOCoatedV2 ordered, thus wrong or no CMYK profile embedded.

You send a file with the profile ISOCoated and a colour area in CMYK 100/70/0/0 and order a proof according to ISOCoatedV2.
We ignore the ISOCoated profile and proof the pure colour value 100/70/0/0 according to ISOCoatedV2.

Why do we do this?
In our proofs, we try to reproduce the “lived reality” of the print as well as possible. In many conversations with printers we have seen that in almost 100% of the cases they do not convert profiles from CMYK to CMYK, but instead put a colour value of 100/70/0/0 on the plate without taking CMYK profiles into account, insert paper and print in conformity with the standards. So we also map this way, although it would actually be “more correct” to perform a colour space transfer from ISOCoated 100/70/0/0 to ISOCoatedV2. However, this results in a different colour value, for example 100/63/1/6 for relatively colorimetric conversion with depth compensation or 100/63/3/15 perceptively with depth compensation!

In practice:

One of our customers did not proof 30 slightly different, dark blue colour areas in ISOCoatedV2 on our premises, but on the premises of a colleague, under each of which the CMYK value was in black lettering, in order to sample the colour of a powder-coated surface. The customer defined a very well fitting CMYK colour value on the basis of the proofed colour areas, inserted it into his brochures and started the print jobs. Result: The dark blue was a distinctly different blue than on the reference proof, customer and agency were very dissatisfied and went on troubleshooting. Now the case came to us.
We received a file for proofing according to ISOCoatedV2 and compared it with our colleague’s proof. The colours with the same black CMYK values printed underneath were clearly different, but both proofs were provided with media wedges and measured correctly. After some troubleshooting, we came up with the idea of requesting the original proof from our colleague, which also existed. In this one there was a Fogra27Coated profile, thus an implementation of the old ISOCoated. A proof according to ISOCoatedV2 had been ordered at that time. Had it happened? The colleague had taken the input profiles into account, which resulted in a significant change in the CMYK values of the colour patches, as mentioned above, due to a colour space transfer from CMYK to CMYK. The black printed CMYK values under the colour patches had of course not changed. The patterned CMYK value therefore did not correspond to the proofed value at all. Our customer fell from all clouds: “How, our CMYK values were not proofed”. This would not have happened with us, because we would ignore the embedded profile with CMYK data. In this case this would also have been our customer’s expectations.
After almost two hours, we had determined the “error” (or perhaps rather: the “difference”), created a proof for our customer that was “in line with expectations”, which he could use to determine the appropriate CMYK value in ISOCoatedV2, and solved the problem.

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freieFarbe e.V. – Review of the General Meeting and Preview

On the last weekend in September the general meeting of the association freieFarbe e.V. took place in Tübingen. From Friday to Sunday, the members worked, discussed, conceived and, as you can see on the picture, ” punted” in and with new products and ideas in the best weather on the Neckar river.

freieFarbe e.V. General Meeting 2018: Punting together on the Neckar river after the general meeting at Proof GmbH in Tübingen. Photo: Peter Jäger

After a meeting with the colour management specialists from GMG on Friday, who support the association with software and proofing media, work continued on the new CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas in the afternoon, to wrap up the day with tarte flambée and wine at Matthias Betz’ house.

On Saturday, the general meeting followed at Lorettoplatz at Proof GmbH, where the past year was discussed and the coming year was touched upon. With the CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas and the DIN SPEC 16699 Open Colour Communication much was reached and accomplished, but numerous ideas need to be evaluated, weighted, financed and worked on.

Present were: From Germany Matthias Betz from Proof GmbH as this year’s host, Jan-Peter Homann from Homann Colormanagement in Berlin, Holger Everding from DTP Studio in Oldenburg and the Swiss Peter Jäger from pre2media in Hombrechtikon, Eric A. Soder from pixsource in Uster and Matteo Baschera from galledia in Zurich.

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First online printers switch to PSOCoatedV3 and PSOUncoatedV3

With DieDruckerei.de, the first well-known online printer has switched to PSOCoatedV3 and PSOUncoatedV3. A sign that almost exactly three years after the new Fogra51/52 standards appeared, they are increasingly being used in production and as a requirement for printers to produce data. The fact that also here the conversion does not run completely smoothly, shows up in the data requirements, which recognize beside the new PSOCoatedV3 also a 300% variant of the profile – a legacy from the ISOCoatedV2 300% times, PSOCoatedV3 is present only in a 300% version, a …

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HLC Colour Atlas freieFarbe proof.de 2

CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas available in the Proof.de Shop

It has taken almost a year, but we are all the more pleased now: The “CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas” is completed and can be ordered in our shop. The HLC Colour Atlas is a open source, high-precision colour system based on open standards.

The CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas offers professional users of colour three decisive advantages:

  • The CIELAB HLC colour atlas is based on open, non-proprietary standards that are free of copyrights and trademarks.
  • The colour atlas with all components is available to all users free of charge online and can be downloaded, used and passed on directly.
    It is released under an OpenSource Creative Commons license.
  • The printed reference of the CIELAB HLC colour atlas impresses with outstanding precision and, unlike some commercial products, the colour accuracy is extremely high with a DeltaE00 median of 0.3 and an average DeltaE00 of 0.5. In most cases, the deviation from the ideal colour reference and colour differences between two colour atlases can be measured, but not perceived by the human eye. Each atlas is produced on our best Fogra-certified high-end proofing printer on Fogra-certified paper. Each copy is delivered with an individual, colourimetric test report in accordance with ISO 12647-7:2016 to document the colour accuracy of each individual colour atlas.

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