North Queensland printer Lotsa Printing has saved up to $30,000 since it began running ISO colour certified by Colour Graphic Services (CGS) in August last year.
‘It all started with a colour health check – the kind that David Crowther of CGS is offering for free at PrintEx,” said Peter Martin, the owner of Lotsa Printing, Cairns, Port Douglas and Townsville.
“We had some minor colour issues that baffled us so I did some research and David suggested we print his special colour strip on a couple of jobs and send them down to him. The reports he sent back indicated a fail on all of them to the ISO colour standards. Naturally, I was somewhat pissed off but, being fanatical about good colour, I decided to press ahead. We went through the ISO process in August 2014, achieved certification and since then we’ve lowered ink costs by about 15% and seen a significant reduction in reprints.
Martin told Print21 he estimates that he’s saved between $25,000 and $30,000 since receiving ISO certification in August 2014.
“We now print with great confidence and customers think the colour quality is fantastic. We’ve even had a competitor describe our colour as ‘bullet-proof’ since we did the ISO.”
Any issue with quality can now be identified immediately, said Martin. “We no longer need to rely on press density settings or visual inspection to know if colour is correct. A quick 60 second scan and report tells us precisely where we are on colour accuracy. We can see when the press or CTP is starting to wander and can take pro-active steps to correct it. Until ISO, it would wander right off before we started getting complaints. We’ve achieved ISO colour on the iGen digital and both HP roll fed and flatbed wide format machines, so that now we print on anything and we have excellent consistency of colour across all printers and media.
“When we first went to David for assistance I was sceptical. But after a hard four days on site with David, and fingerprinting both the Ryobi 920 5 colour and the Xerox iGen4, we passed the ISO certification. Both staff and clients immediately saw a clear improvement in our output. It was good before but now it was exceptional - skin tones, gradients, pictures and everything had that clarity and real life colour. This is the best thing we have done in the last 5 years.”
Martin urged other printers to ‘get off their arse’ and take advantage of the free colour checks being offered by Crowther at PrintEx next month.
“I would say to all offset and digital printers attending PrintEx that this opportunity is too good to pass on. Get onto David and he can send a simple ISO colour strip or the full blown test sheet to you for printing and bring that along to the show and get a real independent assessment of your colour. Be prepared to be advised that you are not at ISO standard. Then, if you are serious about your colour you can take the next step to certification and worry free printing.”