CTP Newspapers Cape Town is achieving the ISO standard quickly and easily with the Mellow Colour programme, installed by DigitalView. The programme supplies optimal information with a single scan, assisting both the pre-press and press departments, saving time, reducing waste, and improving quality.
Professional and consistent colour printing, both heatset or coldset, has been a great challenge for many printing companies. Technology used by clients has allowed clients to better their output, giving them the edge in sharpness, crispness and visual sensation. This has had a direct influence on the way that printing companies conduct their day to day business and has forced them to implement systems to ensure that they deliver the quality that their clients are looking for.
The high demand for quality full colour printing has challenged the newspaper industry. Not too long ago, only a few pages would have been printed in full colour. This was mainly paid advertisements, as colour reproduction was expensive. As pre-media and pre-press technologies improved, colour printing is more in demand, opening up a new era with an ever-growing demand for quality.
‘To achieve the desired quality, we often had to rely on an outsourced colour specialist to optimise our workflow for the various presses by writing profiles for each press,’ said Douw Hurter, prepress manager at CTP Newspapers in Cape Town. ‘To keep our press profiling up to date on a more regular basis, the opportunity arose to start doing this ourselves.’
‘I began my search for better equipment and more accurate systems, but could not find any that were both user-friendly and accurate enough to give me the desired outcome. On returning from drupa, our general manager, Eugene van Rensburg, introduced me to the Mellow Colour product and told me about all the wonderful functionality this product had to offer,’ said Hurter. ‘It seemed almost too good to be true. After a lot of thought and research into the product, the call was made to make a purchase. Installation was done by DigitalView, followed by training, which started firstly with a thorough introduction to colour and colour perception.
‘Mellow Colour gives me the ability to gather the results from each print job on a daily basis. This has aided me in my quest to keep track of each press performance. The aim of the Mellow Colour programme is to assist print companies to achieve the ISO standard quickly and easily. Regular audits are done to ensure that the tools are in place to achieve standardisation. This in itself instils disciplines that were often never considered in print companies. The efficiencies are enhanced and the mind-set of the staff has changed for the better.’
