Colour Management ‘Norms’ for predictable and consistent colour print output
Whether you are doing digital production print, wide format for signage, POS and display printing, sheetfed offset for commercial or packaging, flexo for packaging, heat-set web for catalogue and magazine printing or even RGB photo print, there are a few colour management ‘norms’ we should pay attention to.
When we say ‘norms’ this can also mean ‘standards’, although I usually like to refer to standards in the actual sense of ISO standards.
There are four basic areas we are going to cover.
- RGB colour space
- The CMYK standard for print
- ICC colour management
- Tolerancing for Process Control and Quality Control
RGB colour space

What to use? sRGB or Adobe RGB? If your are a pro photographer you are probably capturing in RAW and then finally using Adobe RGB for your RGB conversion.
If you are like 95% of the public, capturing images on your mobile phone these will be in the sRGB colour space. Either is workable, but high end pro photographers usually swear by the Adobe RGB colour space as it is larger than sRGB.
Many print systems and use the sRGB colour space as a default for the incoming RGB images. But, importantly, there is usually an important check box to tick — honoring or use the embedded profile. This means if the workflow or RIP picks up the RGB images in file, and they are embedded or assigned with Adobe RGB then that profile will be used. On there flip side, if the RGB image(s) has no embedded profile then the default will be used — this could be sRGB.
It is very important to check the RGB settings in your workflow or RIP if you are using RGB images in your production.
The CMYK standard for print

There is a very good CMYK print standard available that can be used as a benchmark and target for just about all other print process — ISO 12647–2. This is standard for offset print and it can be fairly easily applied to digital contract proofing, digital production print, wide format print and flexographic packaging print.
Whilst the ISO 12647–2 print standard itself is really about ‘calibrating’ and setting up an offset sheetfed or headset web press, the target colour values have been used to create ‘standard’ ICC print profiles.
For digital proofing, digital print and wide format print we almost always have to use ICC profiles to colour manage the workflow and print devices.
The latest version of the standard is mirrored with two available characterisation data sets and ICC profiles. These are Fogra 51 and PSO Coated v3.icc for Premium Coated PS1 (print substrate 1) and Fogra 52 and PSO Uncoated v3 fogra 52.icc for Uncoated woodfree PS5 (print substrate 5).

Basically if you are printing digitally onto a substrate that achieve the colour gamut of a good quality coated stock then you would use PSO Coated v3.icc as the target.
If you are still printing or set up to the previous version of the standard then you can still use Fogra 39 and ISO Coated v2 eci.icc.
All the RIP’s are different in the way they implement the digital colour management but attention should be given to;
a) Using the right or correct CMYK profile (one of the above mentioned standard CMYK icc) for your final print simulation.
b) Using the recommended RI (rendering intent) to achieve the right outcome of the aforementioned point — i.e. Relative Colorimetric with BPC (Black Point Compensation).
ICC Colour Management
The International Colour Consortium (ICC) was established in the early 1990’s. ICC profiles is the standard way for managing colour across different devices — capture (camera, scanner), display (computer monitors and other device displays) and printers (think laser/toner, inkjet, etc.)
But many prepress staff, printers, designers and those working in ad agencies still struggle to understand the fundamentals of assigning and converting with ICC profiles. I am not going to attempt to explain all about ICC profiles here, suffice to say that using ICC profiles will not fix bad colour or a poorly captured image or photo. ICC profiles are about managing colour from device to device — from capture to monitor to printer, for example. Once you have a grip on it there is really no other way for managing colour.
There are many ICC available for free download and usage and myriad of measurement instruments and ICC software packages for creating your own ICC profiles.
The final point here is that it is easy to create and make a profile — follow the bouncing ball or easy steps in the software. But creating and building a good and valid profile is not always easy!
Tolerancing for Process Control and Quality Control

For process control with offset print the use of densitometers, either with simple handheld, or auto scanning off line, or closed loop is still widespread. A densitometer will tell you if you are up density and if the inking is even across the sheet. But densitometers are essentially colour blind instruments.
A spectrophotometer on the other will tell you about the colour of the colour, covering complete colorimetry and densitometry. A spectrophotometer will enable you to check dE (delta E) tolerancing that is widely used today by colour specifiers, brand owners and packaging companies. The current ISO 12647–2 standard uses dE 5* as the tolerance for the primaries, CMYK. *Using the tolerance method dEab or CIELAB 1976.
There is currently no international for spot or custom colours, but a widely accepted tolerance is dE2, using the dE2000 tolerance formula.
What the key points?
- If you are going use RGB images in your workflow pay specific attention to your RGB colour management settings
- Making use of current ISO 12647 print standards (and the associated characterisation data sets and ICC profiles) enables a clearly defined set of targets (and tolerances) for digital contract proofing, digital and wide format print and offset print
- Make sure you are up to speed using the correct digital colour management with ICC profiles in the design phase and in production and prepress areas
- Use a clear set of tolerances for process control and for quality control reporting for CMYK and spot colours.
Using colour management standards, with clearly defined tolerances will enable you to save valuable production time, improve customer communications, reduce waste, and vastly improve customer satisfaction.
For more information on setting up and looking after Digital Colour Management and Printer Colour Management contact us at info@colourgraphicservices.com.
