Is anyone out there using G7 specifications?

[signswi]

We're looking at adding a new machine or two and want to keep a consistent color across all of them, so that if a job has to be bumped from one process to another or a breakdown occurs and another machine has to fill in, the customer won't see a difference.

G7 seems like a good way to go about it, just curious if anyone on signs101 has implemented it.

 

[Robert Boyd]

Please explain G7 specifications

 

[dmcprint]

Jesse - You'll find some customer testimonials on the Nazdar Consulting Website! SGIA partnered with Nazdar to provide print shops with G7 training. Hope this helps!

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

G7 is the way to go. That's actually what I'm working on setting up today.

I also work for a large commerical printer and we have all of our presses G7 certified. Makes it very easy to keep items printing the same.

Making the G7 process work isn't really very hard. You will need some softare such as Curve 2 software to check the curves to make sure you are in gray balance.

You can learn more about the specification at www.idealliance.org

 

[National Sign Co. - Print]

We are in the process of becoming G7 certified. It is a pretty involved process with a lot of specific requirements. Not to mention a hefty capital investment implementation.

The benefits are amazing and any shop who wants to focus consistent results in color space and work flow will greatly succeed with G7 standards.

 

[Stephenedwardgraphic]

We had a rep from Fuji at our commerical printing plant this week helping with some G7 stuff. He was telling me that 3 years ago when we were first certified we would send our press runs to Idealliance and they would certify you. There was some questions about how accurately they were checking the data to make sure you passed. Now R.I.T checks over the data so it is supposed to be tougher to pass now. That is a good thing for those who actually go through the process...because it is a harder thing to obtain...and not just anyone can do it. For those of you who go down the G7 road....it will be worth it. You will have much less waste and your color will be very consistent.

Also if you ever have to do a campaign project where maybe other elements are being in printed in lets say magazines etc... and the different elements of those campaigns are supposed to color match....if the other printers are using G7 all should come out looking really good.

 

[Gene@mpls]

Can't find much on G7 spec but I think you are looking for color management
- might search for that. Is this a spec to adjust color management to?

Opps- Disregard this post- when I posted this there were no other posts and it no longer is relevant.

 

[signswi]

Thanks for the quick responses dmc, stephen, merritt. I'm not sure we'd go whole-hog and go after certification, at least not in the foresee-able future. I think I'll implement a rough G7 workflow this weekend and test out a bunch of case scenarios. I had been putting this off waiting to get some new, more technical staff in and that's finally occurred so now is the time to start experimenting.

Do you guys bring absolutely everything into your G7 workflow or do you also run some traditional workflows or even unmanaged stuff when appropriate? Are you running G7 with SWOP or GRACoL? I'm leaning GRACoL...

 

[dmcprint]

I can't see a reason to use unmanaged/other workflows once you've implemented G7. Use GRACol to achieve the rich densities required for digital printing. SWOP values will cause your prints to look washed out.

 

[signswi]

That's what I've been noticing as well, started playing with GRACoL a few months ago and definitely saw an increased richness over SWOP. When I came into this company everything was unmanaged so it's been a process just getting to the point where color is semi-reliable and I'd like to push the company all the way over the edge.

 

[dmcprint]

Check out this article "The Power of Neutral Gray" on NazdarConsulting.com. It's great at explaining the values needed to achieve Neutral Gray. Good Luck!

 

[signswi]

Read that earlier today -- it makes a lot of sense. It's what I'm looking for, a consistent baseline which we can then make adjustments off of to make the customer happy across mediums/processes. Cheers

 

[eye4clr]

I have to confess a very quick skim on the nazdar article (which is very informative), but it looks like it ignores K in the grey balance.

Our inkjet black inks can have several points of chroma by themselves and would definitely skew efforts at tight grey balance. Did I miss something in my 60 second skim?

 

[P Wagner]

I know that this thread is two-plus years old, but I am interested in whether or not more sign manufacturers are moving to the G7 method?