No doubt you marvelled at the brilliant print job on the brochure you received when you were shopping for your latest BMW.

And with good reason – BMW demands brand consistency in all its communications material. All of its print suppliers have to guarantee absolute accuracy. The car maker played a major role in the rise of a set of international standards to guarantee print quality.

While ISO 12647 has swept into print conversations in Australia, only a few local printers have so far been certified by major European certification bodies Fogra and Ugra. Certifiers and printers who spoke to ProPrint said that time, effort and money have put the brakes on aspirations toward colour standards, especially during the downturn.

Hitting ISO 12647-2 for offset litho requires a close analysis of every facet of the printing process. Sure, pre-press and press settings are critical. But the role of paper is no less important. In fact, paper is at the very centre of the issue, says Yves Roussange, director of Colourprocess and one of the first people in Australia to raise the subject of print standards in the industry.

“The paper is the key element of getting to the standard, and is the most important part of the trio of colour management – paper, ink and press. If one of these components is not in specification you will trip over and fall,” he says.

Yet paper provides one of the real conundrums here. It’s extremely difficult to manufacture paper with identical specs from one pallet to the next, let alone from one week to the next. It all rests on the ability of paper manufacturers to maintain consistency of whiteness characteristics for their paper brand and product.

Roussange explains: “The white point of a paper is the key to compliance to the standard. The whiter (cooler) the paper is, the more the print will be out of standard.

“A whiter paper is a paper stock with a high level of metamerism. The metamerism of the paper stock will also influence the colour reading for the profile creation.

Inaccurate readings
Roussange continues: “For the ISO 12647-2 print standard, the stock will have a big influence on the tolerance of the L*a*b reading of the ink set. For the ISO 12647-7 proofing standard, the metameric part of the inkjet paper (the blue colourant in the proofing paper to make it look whiter) will influence and give inaccurate colour readings for the profiling of the paper/printer/ink combination.

“The colour stability and longevity of the proofing stock could also be an issue over time. Some proofing stocks have a very short life span for colour stability and longevity, meaning there is the possibility of a colour shift over a couple of days.

“In general, under different lighting conditions, say, from office light to daylight, you will experience a colour shift in the neutral grey and skin tones from a greenish to a reddish overall cast in paper with a high component of metamerism,” says Roussange.

So the onus is on paper manufacturers to maintain consistency during the manufacturing process, and having stocks tested to ascertain their consistency.

But certifying every paper stock? It’s safe to say that will never happen. Instead, paper manufacturers will provide a range of stocks suitable for particular occasions. Then printers can get certified for prescribed stocks.

Tony Ashton, CPI Group’s technical manager, fine paper, says numerous stocks in the company’s range have already been certified to ISO 12647-2. Some printers are now on the lookout for such stocks.

“A few printers have asked if our papers meet the standard. All our commodity coated [stocks] do, and some of our uncoateds, in line with industry, are slightly ‘blue’, if you will.

“Our grades are typical of what is ‘above average quality’ and widely available in the market. The ISO 12647-2 standards were set in 2006 and, for uncoated, happened to be on a paper stock that was just outside the normal level of so-called ‘blue’ component. The impact, however, is not material,” says Ashton.

“The random selection of a specific uncoated product for the 2006 benchmark has seemingly caused the mainstream of uncoated stocks to sit just outside the standard, but as mentioned, it is not material,” he adds.

Rohan Dean, group strategic sourcing manager, PaperlinX Merchanting Australia, suggests that while a few printers are focused on ISO compliance, every printer is looking for more consistency in the stocks they use. It’s a simple case of producing a better
product every time.

“For paper, we’ve always been able to support printers with technical details such as thickness, whiteness and brightness. However, these are usually provided with tolerance levels specified.

“Printers are now seeing that controlled media mapping or paper profiling has meant strong improvement in print, from colour control to improved makeready, and even savings in ink reduction. Going forward, we feel that most printers will be looking for the option to run ISO-qualified and -certified paper,” says Dean.

KW Doggett Fine Paper’s marketing manager, Catherine Doggett, says that a few printers have approached the firm with requests for ISO-compliant stocks, but the demand was not widespread. She points out that Doggetts can supply paper characteristics to printers that wish to establish print profiles, whether that’s for ISO certification or not.

Fogra PSO-certified printer Printpoint suggests it is up to printers to select very limited stocks that suit their client base if ISO standard-compliant print is required (see box).

Managing director Alan Rhodes points out that most commercial printers use a wide variety of stocks for the disparate print work they do, so they can’t use only ISO 12647-2 certified stocks.

“Most people realise there is going to be a difference in print results from different stocks, or you’d have to do curves for every stock you use, and that would be impossible for most printers.
It’s just not feasible,” says Rhodes.

Paper manufacturers certainly agree that it’s not feasible for all stocks to meet ISO criteria. Meeting in the middle seems inevitable as manufacturers try to assist printers with a range of ISO-certified stocks, and printers accept the limitations of paper stocks and choose from that narrower range for ISO standard compliance.

Growing demand
CPI’s Ashton says: “The concept here is that standards are set to work with what is generally available in the market. We assume the ISO standards may well be incrementally modified to suit paper shade and characteristics that will be driven by fashion and shade trends.”

“We expect more printers to ask the question [of stock availability], but the uptake so far has been limited. The driver here was corporate branding consistency, so in the early days, it may well depend on the printer’s client base. Of course, any commitment by printers to continuous improvement as a business value may cause it to grow some legs from that angle,” adds Ashton.

PaperlinX’s Dean says: “We believe good colour reproduction does not end with cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Paper is just as important to the printing process and is considered the fifth colour. We feel that most stocks would benefit with having the colour control of ISO.”

It’s in printers’ hands to profile their print processes to ISO standards. Their demands will drive paper manufacturers and merchants to meet them, and both sides will benefit in the longer term.

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