RICOH Auto Color Adjuster – Explore colour management’s new way

23 August 2024: Ralph Amann, Professional Services Manager, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe, explains how the RICOH Auto Color Adjuster could be a huge win for your business, enabling you to focus on client needs, not calibration.

What if your press operators didn’t have to manually calibrate their machines multiple times a day ? What if you no longer had to plan that downtime into your schedule or organise and prioritise jobs based on when the press was last calibrated ?

Operating free from those constraints could be a huge win for your business. It could enable you to focus on client needs, not calibration. It could increase your throughput considerably. And it could give you an edge in the competitive print market.

Colour Profiling Challenge ….

In the world of printing, speed is of the essence, especially when it comes to colour accuracy and consistency. Printer profiling and calibration are two key processes in colour management.

Calibration is a relatively quick fix that aligns a printer’s output with an established colour standard, using a set of density targets to correct any colour drift that occurs over time due to environmental changes or the printer’s components. It is often done in a couple of minutes.

Profiling, on the other hand, creates a ‘colour map’ for your printer. When a design is sent to print, the computer translates the digital colours into instructions that align with your printer’s ‘colour map.’ It requires lots of patch measurements to tell your computer how your printer interprets different colours. Profiling is a more accurate process, it is a critical factor for businesses where brand integrity depends on colour precision, such as in logo printing. However, it takes longer to complete, sometimes up to two hours. This downtime can hinder your company’s workflow. It also requires knowledge in colour management.

Ricoh’s Innovation: RICOH Auto Color Adjuster …

RICOH Auto Color Adjuster dramatically reduces the time required for printer profiling. It does this by using advanced technology that streamlines this process. As it is designed for ease of use, it doesn’t require expert knowledge. Its sophisticated spectrophotometer scans printed charts at a much faster rate of 30 seconds per sheet. This is because our software can quickly analyse a high volume of colour data from the printed material.

With this technology, RICOH Auto Color Adjuster can also take a printed image, treat it as a technical chart, and generate a profile by measuring the colours on this image to replicate hues from the samples in only a few minutes. For example, if you have previously printed materials – say book covers or event invitations and need additional prints later, consistency in colour is crucial. With RICOH Auto Color Adjuster, you take an original printed sample to the device, and within minutes the RICOH Auto Color Adjuster analyses and captures the colour profile using advanced scanning technology. It then automatically sends the correct profile to the printer allowing it to reproduce a repeatable print. It is a revolutionary technology and an unparalleled capability not offered elsewhere in the industry.

With RICOH Auto Color Adjuster you can achieve the best colour accuracy for each print job without the long traditional setup. It drastically boosts efficiency and sets a new pace for the future of print workflow management.

Key Features …

– Quick colour adjustment: Automate the creation of ICC profiles to see consistent results. Easily match colours on multiple units by using profiles.

– Verified Results: The RICOH Auto Color Adjuster can make an automated “go/no go” judgement that’s entirely bias free. Replace subjective visual checks with industry standard colour verification.

Precise colour matching: Match colour from pre-printed samples. Achieve accurate, repeatable, precise colour in a matter of minutes.

Benefits … 

– Consistent Quality: ensures uniform colour output across different printers and have more flexibility of printer allocation including digital, offset, sheetfed, and wide format printers.
– Reduced Time: it dramatically saves time for colour adjustment to make it easier for anyone.
– Enhanced Productivity: it allows for more print jobs to be completed in less time.
– Maximised Resource: decreases the reliance on specialist staff for colour management tasks and creates more flexibility for resource allocation.

Real World Impacts and Client Feedback … 

One print business owner shared their experience with a rush job for marketing brochures. They needed to ensure colour consistency across thousands of prints. With RICOH Auto Color Adjuster, they matched the colours within minutes, impressing their client with the quick turnaround and the brochure’s professional look.

Another business specialising in corporate branding praises RICOH Auto Color Adjuster’s ability to maintain colour integrity across various materials. They can now seamlessly transition from paper to card stock without the usual downtime for recalibration. This enhances their service offering and client satisfaction.

With RICOH Auto Color Adjuster’s innovative technology, Ricoh clients not only save time but also maintain high quality outputs and enhance their clients’ trust in them.

Unleash your colour potential with RICOH Auto Color Adjuster

RICOH Auto Color Adjuster is a gamechanger for the printing industry. It simplifies the complexities of colour management and colour matching, enabling print businesses of all sizes and types to succeed with colour management – without a colour management expert on staff. You can achieve true, objective colour consistency from previous print jobs or across your entire fleet of devices, including digital, offset, sheetfed and wide format printers. With no practical limits on your colour abilities, you’re free to go after any and almost all clients and job types.

www.ricoh-europe.com