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Accurate reproduction of a brand’s colors is essential to recognition, credibility, and even customer perceptions of product quality. To protect their images, brand owners are justifiably strict when it comes to adhering to color standards. Any deviation from established standards can lead to costly reprints and lost time.

The most common cause of color distortion is the lack of a consistent reference throughout the specification, development and production processes. Since brand colors often utilize mixed or “spot” inks, they require more color-critical production phases than traditional process color printing. Distortions creep in when each of these stages uses a different color standard. Design software used for specification may use different libraries than the proofing software uses to make its calculations. Ink mixing and quality control (QC) may be based on digital data or physical customer samples. None of these may precisely match the drawdown samples or proofs used by press operators.

Cloud-based digital color management solutions enable brands and their suppliers to communicate colors more accurately and effectively. Unlike simple repositories of electronic color standards, digital color management software is specifically designed to link every phase from color creation to production assessment with a single interface and business logic.

Industry Expectations of Cloud Technology

Modern technology has made it possible for brands and their suppliers to fully digitize brand color management and communication. Migrating this information into the cloud allows it to be exchanged quickly and easily between different sites and databases with the help of standardized file formats. For many operations, however, uncontrolled brand color exchanges come with unacceptable security risks.

In addition, most of the production problems print operations face today result from inconsistencies in the digital environment. These range from differences in software, methodologies and cultures, as well as the lack of standardized color references.

Cloud-based color management platforms are specifically designed to support accurate digital color reproduction processes, align user expectations, and utilize modern security technologies. In particular, they’re built to satisfy customer needs and expectations like these:

• A stable, transparent and consistent system
• Clear guidelines and an intuitive brand color management language
• Fast operation
• 24/7 availability
• Independence from printing technology and production workflows
• Ability to work with different inks, i.e., process, spot, metallic, special effects, etc.
• Compliance with international standards
• Integration with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
• Ability to work with color proofing software, such as GMG OpenColor
• Independence from web browsers on local machines
• Support for standardized file formats such as CxF, QTX and/or MIF
• Intellectual property protection
• High level of customization
• Multi-language support
• Ability to use spectrophotometers from different vendors
• Strong reporting and production data analytic tools

Enhancing the Brand Color Management Workflow

Here’s an example workflow that demonstrates how a cloud-based color management platform can improve brand color management.

Step 1: Establish Color Standards

As in a traditional workflow, the first step is to design and create the brand color(s). If they already exist, a color expert or other responsible individual should conduct a full review and approval process. The visual brand color set should also be supplemented with a specification, which will be used for production and QC.

Step 2: Create Reference Colors

Once brand colors are approved, a referencing system needs to be created physically and/or digitally. Traditionally, this has often been done by selecting from an established digital library or physically printed color guide. This approach isn’t sufficient, however, because it has no link to production realities. Precise color descriptions must account for multiple substrates and other printing specifics.

Brand colors based on CMYK or CMYKOGV inks can also make proper reproduction tricky because of the variations inherent in process color.

Advanced references may add spectral curves — brand color information captured with a spectrophotometer — saved as CxF files. In theory, these curves should improve the workflow by creating standard reference points for every production stage. However, the CxF format also introduces weaknesses into the process. It requires additional effort to create, is easily modified and difficult to update, and offers no intellectual property protection. A better approach is to retain color information in a master database that allows colors to be shared between production sites without saving CxF files.

Step 3: Approve a Complete Cloud-Based Specification

Everything we’ve described up to this point is common in traditional brand color management workflows. A more comprehensive specification — preferably cloud-based — ensures that brands can correctly compare quality and production costs across multiple print shops anywhere in the world. This ensures that different production facilities provide cost estimates based on the same types of substrates and significantly lowers the risk of an incorrectly printed job.

A complete specification should enable an objective QC and appraisal process, minimizing the impact of subjective visual comparisons as much as possible. Although the approval processes can vary among projects, what’s most important is to establish a clear technical description for each printed product. In this way, brands can deliver their own specifications, including color descriptions, directly to the dedicated production workflow, then monitor each facility’s quality or performance remotely.

Step 4: Leverage the Cloud-Based Workflow

Cloud-based color management makes this type of workflow possible. Brand colors and their precise specifications can be easily pulled into the system, making them available for the entire population of printers, designers and other production departments involved. The value of this capability — and the speed with which it can be implemented — is often underestimated. It makes the whole process more dynamic and flexible, especially when production requirements need to be changed or scaled.

Figure 2 shows one of the multiple possible workflows. In this example, a cloud-based platform is used as a global link between the brand design agency and production plants. It can serve as an accreditation system for print shops, evaluating the competence level of each site and ensuring production quality throughout the supply chain. The platform can also help accelerate the onboarding processes of print suppliers seeking printing quality certifications such as Process Standard Offset (PSO) or the G7 System. However, consistent quality monitoring is still essential with companies that have demonstrated these levels of excellence.

The best color management solutions provide a centralized platform for brand managers, designers, printers and other professionals. Digitized colors can be accessed in industry standard tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, allowing designers to work with specified, measured and approved colors that can be used as references for color mixing and QC. Well-designed platforms also allow software solutions like GMG OpenColor or Hybrid PACKZ to grab spectral color information, enabling them to use approved colors within their own workflows.

In a pressroom, cloud services deliver all the data needed to control printing processes and perform QC. The same centralized platforms can be used to generate formulations for color labs. If color needs to be corrected directly on a press, an operator can easily apply corrections without sending ink back to the lab.

Every Stakeholder Wins With Cloud-Based Color Management

One of the significant advantages of a cloud architecture, apart from consolidation of brand standards, is that all involved parties have access to the latest color references and can perform different production phases using a single user interface. If specifications change, all connected users immediately receive updates.

In addition, approved color references can be used by other industries, such as textiles, paint or plastics production.

The benefits of using a cloud color-management platform across the entire production and supply chain include:

• A single color-reference system that provides up-to-date information to all stakeholders
• Easy color matching
• Consideration of manufacturing processes
• 10 to 20% fewer rejections because of objective assessments
• 25 to 30% productivity improvements because of reduced order fulfillment times
• Greater production uptime
• Less waste
• Reduced training and implementation costs
• Integration with ordering or stock-keeping systems
• Extended reporting capabilities
• High data security level including point in time restore option

The bottom line is a win-win situation: brand owners and production companies can interact and communicate more efficiently. Cloud-based workflows improve quality while saving production time and resources.