Ink Saving solution?

[Louis Dery]

Hi Todd,

I completely agree with your description of the benefits of using DeviceLink profiles in RIP. Also, just let you know that with very low ink coverage (240) and good GCR engine, you won’t loose color accuracy if you use the right DeviceLink tool!

Louis Dery
TGLC inc.
www,tglc.com
Color management solutions

[jschrieber]

We're a newspaper of about 180,000 daily circulation .... ManRoland presses, PPI layout/output, Agfa GRAFIXrip RIPs, and we use OneVision's Asura product extensively in our workflow ....

We began using OneVision's InkSave plugin in their AsuraPro product about a month ago, and so far results have been terrific. As long as black is maintained at a consistent level, photos actually look a little better than they used to. Myself, I haven't heard of any negative feedback.

It's wonderfully simply to incorporate .... a couple settings and away you go .... TAC can be manipulated in the plugin as well, and our PrePress Mgr is testing different settings now.

Too early to provide any specific feedback on true savings, but judging from what we see in the page views of the seps provided by our output software, there will definitely be some savings there.

Only thing I don't like so far is the change we had to make to our graybar at the bottom of each page which was modified to provide a black square at eight points across the page for pressroom to get a good black measurement all across the page .... not wild about the way that looks, but again, haven't heard any specific complaints about it.

All in all, thus far it's very encouraging.

jack
omaha

[gordo]

Jack,

What ink sequence are you running?

thx, gordo

[jschrieber]

Hey Gordon,

I'm a systems person .... not press .... but I'm told it's C M Y K
I'll just have to go along with that.

jack

[Hopkins Printing]

Hi all,

We are evaluating the Alwan and GMG ink saving products and the question I have for all the experienced users of these products is how did you go about determining if you were indeed saving ink?

Many thanks,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing

[gordo]

With the Kodak ColorFlow Software Ink Optimizing Option you can compare pre and post ink usage by looking at the data from Kodak PrintLink digital ink-profiling software or the file bitmaps using Virtual Proofing Software.

thx, gordo

[stargate]

Jon, look at pages 53-55 of gmg inkOptimizer tutorial.

[Gretscher]

To Jon Morgan:

I am currently doing a research on the effect of Alwan Optimizer's ink saving feather.
Since I alway work in the lab and have no way to measure the real ink amount for a big amount of press run.
My way is check and compare the two files (before and after being optimized) in Photoshop.
Select the black channel and observe whether the after-optimized file displays higher density.
In the meantime, the CMY channel should give a lower density when each of their channel been selected.
I am also curious about if any other methods used to measure the amount of ink saving?

[rich apollo]

If you're playing with Alwan, take a look at the Statistics panel. If you work at inputting the right data Alwan will tell you exactly how much ink you're saving - theoretically. The trick is figuring out how many grams of ink get used per square meter of substrate (or image). The default is 1.5, but I roughly calculated ours to about a tenth of that.

So, it'll tell you how much less ink is called for in the file, but then you have to wonder about the press guys running up the ink keys because they've got more "head room".

rich

[Lee Hutchinson]

Rich,

Your spot on on the ink stats and as you say all you have to do is put the correct paramaters in and it will even work out the cost saving based on your ink price.

The press minders however should have no need and also not any real scope to bang up the weights on press. As the GCR is replacing CMY with K they can't push the weights much without fill in and deviance from proof. Only the black is going to have any real effect and pumping this up would give a real dirty look.

The press minders should love it as make ready is quicker and easier. Another show of technology saving them from getting their hands dirty!

Lee