Digital disputes standard differences... Print21 magazine article

When is a printing standard not a printing standard? According to some printers, it is when ISO 12647-2 is applied to digital printing. They believe it should be reserved for offset printing. Not so, according to Bruce Peddlesden who maintains that a printing standard is a standard is a standard.

Supporting printing standards is like supporting Mum’s apple pie. How can you be against it? They develop quality reproduction, drive process improvement and give the industry a distinguishing mark of responsibility. At least, that is the intention.

But all is not well in the printing industry. There is a deep and increasingly corrosive divide between those who maintain that the commonly accepted standard, ISO 12647-2, can only be applied to offset printing and those who maintain it must also be suitable to describe digital printing.

Bruce Peddlesden (pictured), owner and managing director of On Demand is in vanguard of the latter. Not only was he the first to claim ISO certification for his digital printing business in Melbourne—the nation’s largest cut-sheet commercial digital printer—but he vehemently rejects any attempt to corral digital printing by the creation of a separate standard, ISO 15311, as currently proposed by the ISO TC 130 committee.

“What certain people are trying to do is make digital printing appear second best by saying it can’t meet the printing standard,” he says. “It’s a load of rubbish.”

What makes a standard?

The divide centres of the process requirements of the ISO standard. The accepted printing standard, ISO 12647-2, was last updated in 2004. To quote from the abstract; it is directly applicable to proofing and printing processes that use colour separation films as input; [as well as] directly applicable to proofing and printing from printing formes produced by filmless methods as long as direct analogies to film production systems are maintained.

It is Peddlesden’s contention that the inclusion of ‘filmless’ methods of proofing and printing gives implicit recognition to digital processes.

“You have to ask finally, what is the standard for? For the customer it’s a colour standard and if digital machines can meet the standard for colour and consistency why should offset people care? The end result is all that matters and we have been certified as being able to meet the standard.”

Peddlesden sees the move to institute a separate standard that deals specifically with digital printing as an attempt by the offset industry to confine digital to some level less than offset. To his mind, the process standards for the reception, verification, proofing and delivery of a graphics file to the press are identical in offset and digital printing houses. Indeed it is part of the sales pitch of workflow manufacturers that the file can be processed in the same manner all the way until the output method—offset, digital, flexo or screen—is decided.

“Jason Hall from CMYKit did all the work with us. He brought a Swiss certifier from UGRA out here who went through our workflow processes, then stood and watched the prints been produced and took away the required number of samples for testing in the laboratory. All our workflow complies with the ISO standard. The samples taken away proved the printing met the colour consistency standard. I don’t see how they can say ISO does not apply to digital,” he said.

The world is changing

There are two sets of interests intersecting over ISO standards. One is the efficiency benefit that flows to printing companies that get their house in order to meet the standard. Few argue that meeting ISO standards is one of the best ways of refining and developing the manufac­turing process of printing.

Then there is the market perception, which has become ever more important with the launch of the ISO-compliant printers website by the TC 130 committee. This lists the 38 printing companies that have achieved compliance with ISO standards in Australia using UGRA and Fogra certification. (Some companies, such as PMP, are of a size to be able to self-certify and are not included.) Notably, On Demand is on the list as is another digital printing company, Sydney-based Jagar Printing. If the offset lobby succeeds in disputing the application of ISO 12647-2 to digital printing, it may move to remove the purely digital printers from the list.

“The world is changing and the industry has to change as well. We’ve proved we can do it. Digital is the biggest threat to offset and we will not accept that our customers are somehow accepting a different or lower standard. Digital printing is ISO standard,” said Peddlesden.