X-Rite and its subsidiary Pantone expanded its PantoneLIVE cloud-based solution for digitally communicating color with a new service that helps printers and packaging converters manage color libraries.
The new PantoneLIVE Rationalization Service analyzes and consolidates a printer's color library to improve color consistency, increase production efficiencies, and avoid wasteful duplication of color.
Rationalization
Over time, a printer's color libraries can grow substantially when new colors are added. Without appropriate management or attention to the potential issues of duplication, this can quickly evolve into an unmanageable number of colors, resulting in inefficiencies in ink matching, production planning and increases ink inventory costs.
"Printers and converters can benefit from the PantoneLIVE Rationalization Service by analyzing and consolidating colors that are so close together in the color space that they are effectively the same," said Chris Halford, Technical Director for PantoneLIVE Services, X-Rite Pantone. "We have worked with a number of converters who have seen a 30 percent to 45 percent reduction in their color libraries. This creates a leaner color palette with fewer colors to manage and a smaller inventory of inks. This saves time, budget and reduces errors. The remaining colors in the digital library can be easily accessed, giving the printer and the brand owner the confidence that their colors are consistent, no matter where the item is produced or what substrate is used."
Color Mapping
Color Mapping is another service included in the PantoneLIVE Rationalization process. Client colors are mapped to standard Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors and to PantoneLIVE dependent references. With this mapping, a converter's entire packaging supply chain can easily make use of both Master and Dependent Libraries within the PantoneLIVE ecosystem.
Sometimes, due to the realities of production materials and processes, the desired Pantone Master Standard color cannot be achieved with the target substrate and printing process. Pantone Dependent Standards are designed to represent desired Master Standards, and are the Pantone approved best match to the Master standards, while taking into account the effect on color outcome of using various different substrates, inks and printing processes. By mapping original colors to Pantone Master and Dependent Libraries in PantoneLIVE, printers and converters can accurately communicate color across the color supply chain, from designer to brand owner to supplier.
To prevent future color redundancy, PantoneLIVE and the new PantoneLIVE Private Cloud include process controls that assess and evaluate a new color standard when it is added to the library. The system alerts the user if the color already exists or if there is a suitable color match in the library before the new color is added. The PantoneLIVE Private Cloud is an X-Rite service offering that enables the secure publication and sharing of a converter's own color standards via the PantoneLIVE infrastructure.
"The combination of rationalizing and color mapping allows printers to create a palette of known converter-validated and Pantone approved colors," says Halford. "As a result, printers can take full advantage of the benefits of reducing spot color libraries."
X-Rite will demonstrate the PantoneLIVE services at drupa 2016, May 31 through June 10 at the Düsseldorf Fairgrounds in Hall 8b A23. Attendees can speak with X-Rite color experts to learn how the mapping and rationalization service can improve efficiencies across the supply chain delivering fast return on investment (ROI) and increasing customer satisfaction.
