How to achieve high quality flexographic proofing contract

Whether it is offset printing, digital printing or flexographic printing, printers are looking for ways to improve and simplify the production process to cope with the ever-compressing profit margins. One of the solutions is to ensure that the finished products that customers receive can meet their expectations, so as to avoid remaking and reprinting. This means that an accurate, high-quality contract proofing is crucial.

Proofing has always been a headache for flexo printing. Some people may say that the best way to show customers the effect of finished products is to print them out directly. However, this approach is not easy to achieve, not only costly, but also a long period. With other printing processes, relatively simple ink-jet proofing can often be used to simulate the effects of actual printing. The flexographic printing is rather special. The dot enlargement rules and screen angles are different from other printing methods. In addition, spot colors and metallic colors are widely used in flexo printing.

Therefore, for the flexographic printing, the required technical conditions are relatively high. Printers should have a rip that can drive accurate and reliable output devices. The rip of the professional flexographic proofing system can reproduce flexographic printing effects involving a large number of variables and then output an image meeting the contract quality to the proofer. The quality of the proofing is very important, and the quality of proofing of Epson equipment is unparalleled, so it has the largest share in the proofing market. Epson recently introduced four new 8-color printers, stylus pro4880, 7880, 9880 and 11880. These four printers use ultra chromek3 technology for vivid magenta inks to enhance image quality. The print head also uses award-winning micro The piezo (piezoelectric) technology also ensures that high-quality proofs are printed at a reasonable cost.

The problem often encountered in flexographic printing is that the main substrate used in the proofing process is white paper, which is rarely used in the final product of the flexographic printing market. The only way to get a true proof on the actual material is to perform wet proofing, which is beyond the cost bearing range of many printers. The alternative technology is the use of specially developed technology, in conjunction with a high standard inkjet proofer to accurately reproduce the true printing effect.

The flexo proof system from gmg can reproduce the proofing effect of the actual substrate, such as corrugated cardboard. In fact, any low quality paper can be simulated by changing the image noise. Gmg's products have always supported Epson styluspro printers, taking full advantage of the transparency and density of ultra chrome k3 ink systems, and the precision of micro-piezo print head technology with ultra-fine micro dots (ultra microdot) ) The accuracy of ink jet.

The star proof system from compose system solves the complicated problem of dot structure by analyzing the shape of the cmyk dot and the screen angle. This analysis is provided by the actual dot system, which reproduces the original screening and dot shape with proof resolution. When sending to a high-resolution printer, such as Epson Stylus pro4880, it is possible to output high-quality proofs with sharp dots, clear images, accurate colors, and fine-grained quality.

Flexographic screen dots typically require small adjustments in the height or width of the dots to compensate for dot gain during printing. The star proof “dot distortion” tool can generate correct screened dots based on the deformation ratio or expansion ratio of the original under user control, and expands the deformed dot to the correct size. The star proof can also compensate for the loss of small dots during flexo printing during printing. By entering the "dot lost" size value, screen dots less than this size will be removed and will not appear on the proofs, in line with the actual printing situation.

Most rip-processing spot colors use the same approach, that is, through software analysis, the spot color is converted to the closest cmyk value. The open rip flexo from xante's advanced proofing can print composite colors or specific colors for press proofing and customer proofing. Changing the spot color during rips is also possible, reducing the amount of ink needed for overprinting, as well as previewing effects such as limiting, overprinting, and knocking out. Openrip uses kool kolor inkjet proofing technology for icc color management and target device color management files to simulate the final printed product.

Gmg's flexo proof supports all standard spot color systems, such as the hexachrome or pantone spot color libraries, and these standard spot color systems are provided with the product. An image can be divided into up to 64 colors. There is no limit to the total color separation of a printed product. These colors are stored in the database and users can add colors to the database as needed. With the flexo proof solution, color opacity and related printing sequences can be specified on demand, and even white underlay can be designated as a spot color.

Early screening problems can also be resolved with gmg's flex proof. In addition to the prepress data formats that can handle almost all industry standards, flexo proof can also handle the final 1-bit data, such as data from ctp rip. These data are all color management using the original reserved network information, not the information of the de-network. This allows errors such as color tones, moiré and traps to be detected early before the plate is exposed.

It is a problem that rip can output high-quality results, and the final proofing effect may be another matter. If the color exceeds the color gamut, proofs that are proofed will be completely different from what they were supposed to be. The proofer needs the ability to output changes made by the proofing system. Epson large-format printers have a good reputation for color performance thanks to the outstanding performance of ultra chromek3 inks, which have a certain degree of water resistance, can be quickly dried after printing and have excellent lightfastness. Unlike traditional use of a black color alone, Epson ultra chrome k3 ink uses three different concentrations of black ink to achieve more stable and accurate gray balance, and use less color ink to achieve more precise color control. Together with the print resolution of up to 28,801,440 dpi, it can perfectly match the output of rip.

Although professional rip suppliers such as gmg, xante and compose system have made great progress in technology, together with the cooperation of Epson inkjet printers, flexographic printing and proofing technology has taken a big step forward. Not to perfection. With high quality contract proofs, the gap between proofs and finished products is gradually narrowing. The closer the proofs produced by the proofing device are to the finished product, the more happy the customer will be.