ColorGATE and Durst Phototechnik AG have announced their exclusive distribution partnership for the ceramic industry. It is a symbiosis of software and hardware for further development as well as sales and service of the first complete solution for digital tile decoration.
Manufacturers of ceramic tiles can now not only benefit from the quality of the Durst Gamma series, but thanks to the integration of ColorGATE’s Ceramic Productionserver (CPS), they can also benefit from an optimised workflow, accurate colour rendering and highly efficient and colour-consistent reproduction of existing wall or floor tile designs. The close cooperation with Durst Phototechnik AG ensures not only the continuous further development of the CPS, but also that it meets practical requirements.
The first jointly achieved results of the cooperation, which has now lasted for almost two years, can be found in version 10.30 recently released by ColorGATE.
By providing drivers for all devices of the Durst Gamma series for direct communication between CPS and printer, all relevant settings such as resolution or line speed for each job can be automatically transmitted with the print job.
The Universal Ceramic Inkjet driver can also be used with all other Non-Durst ceramic digital printers available on the market. Durst is responsible for the technical support and training, while ColorGATE will concentrate on second-level support.
‘After we presented our range of solutions for colour consistency in digital tile decoration, consisting of the RSC colour measurement solution and the Ceramic Productionserver, at the last Tecnargilla, the technical discussion with the specialists of Durst Phototechnik AG as pioneer and technology leader led to an enormous further development of this complete solution. With Durst, we are pleased to announce an exclusive distribution partner that gives customers and interested parties worldwide access to this innovative range of solutions,’ said Thomas Kirschner, founder and CEO of ColorGATE.
Benefits:
-RGB or CMYK working space profiles provide a unique approach to represent multi-channel colour spaces. These can be used for separation retouching purposes in Adobe Photoshop, ensuring correct colour preview.
-Paper proof printing on all leading proof printers.
-Full range of functions to convert every colour design requirement to the best possible target quality of the end product in the shortest possible time.
-Easy-to-use profiling assistant with automatic error correction to minimise colour errors that can lead to spoilage.
-Integrated Ink Saver function to reduce ink quantities without visible effect.
-Simple design-to-line conversion to reproduce previously produced designs on different lines with different colour sets and/or glazes without colour differences.
-Unique method for creating colour specifications of individual decor and their colour reproduction without the effort of countless adjustments.
Specific colour management tools include, for example, the turnkey solutions FPRM (patented Fingerprint technology) and Rapid Spectro Cube (RSC, a Hi-Res measuring device which can read targets printed on structured and flat tile surfaces). Up to now, ICC profiling has only been used for device-specific colour characterisation in order to achieve the best possible reproduction of any originals on profiled devices. Fingerprint technology extends this conventional approach of the graphic arts industry and uses a new method for synchronous design specification and print process characterisation in industrial surface decoration.
It creates a fingerprint production file (.fpf) which includes a colorimetric specification of the initial print run, which later provides a reliable starting point as a digital master sample. This means that future subsequent runs can be reproduced with consistent colour.
The colorimetric marking clearly defines all colour values contained in the design, such as a coloured fingerprint. This enables interpolation errors during colour transformation into the individual output colour space of any digital printing system to be minimised for future print runs. Consistent colour printing can thus be ensured on any alternative production system or production line, provided that the alternative colour space covers the specific colour space of the colorimetric specification.
The Rapid Spectro Cube represents another revolution in the digital printing process. The RSC is a colorimetric scanning and measuring system using a high-resolution CCD sensor and is connected to ColorGATE´s CPS. This combination acts as an extremely fast and highly accurate colour capture system, providing colour profiles for printer calibration and colour characterisation as well as separation profiles to automatically separate individual designs or design series into the required colour channels of the respective production process or a particular production line configuration.
Furthermore, the system can deliver high quality scans in seconds, which can be processed with standard image processing programmes. Or it clones original materials such as marble, wood or existing tile surfaces accurately in colour and directly in multi-channel file format for precise reproduction on a digital ceramic printer.
COLORGATE www.colorgate.com
