Xeikon has reached an agreement to incorporate Alwan Color Expertise colour calibration products into its Xeikon Color Services (XCS) consulting and software offering.
Most notably the software will include a package for G7 certification and other colour matching services that leverage Alwan’s PrintStandardizer and PrintVerifier software.
‘Print buyers who are procuring a variety of materials, such as marketing collateral, mailings, signage, packaging, books and catalogues, want a similar visual appearance across different printing processes. By taking advantage of Xeikon Color Services, Xeikon press owners can refine their colour workflows and put in place standard operating procedures that will ensure colour consistency across shifts, operators, presses and locations,’ said Jeroen Van Bauwel, director product management. ‘We are pleased to complement our Color Services with the G7 colour matching thanks to the Alwan solutions. This underlines Xeikon’s ongoing commitment to help digital press users achieve the highest quality output, and manage colour.’
Elie Khoury, president of Alwan Color Expertise, added, ‘We are delighted that Xeikon has chosen Alwan Color Expertise as its partner to help its users calibrate and maintain the output quality of Xeikon presses. Although the G7 methodology is largely associated with North America at present, its calibration procedures and benefits are applicable to all printing standards including the emerging ISO 15339 color standard, which provides an elegant and efficient way to integrate digital printing into a cross-process production and certification program. We look forward demonstrating this to visitors at Graph Expo on the Xeikon stand 849.’
XCS comprises four modules:
• Xeikon Color Discovery & Gap Analysis: Xeikon’s colour experts visit the print factory for a thorough audit of customer colour workflows and suggest standardized ways to achieve consistent, repeatable colour.
• Xeikon Color Control (XCC): an easy-to-use cloud-based service enabling generation of profiles and colour tables as well as determining best matches for Pantone and brand colours with Xeikon presses.
• Xeikon G7 Compliance Certification: the G7 standard is designed to help printing operations achieve and maintain accurate and repeatable colour through precise setting of grey balance on the press. PrintStandardizer and PrintVerifier software will be used as key elements of a certification process which results in the customer achieving G7 Master Printer status.
• Xeikon Custom Color Services: this module is available for printers that need to match Xeikon digital print output to that produced by other printing processes (such as flexo or offset, or other types of digital presses). This module combines an onsite discovery stage, followed by current state analysis, recommendations for standard operating procedures and implementation of relevant components including Alwan and X-Rite tools, and training of personnel.
