X-Rite Incorporated and its subsidiary Pantone LLC recently announced that its eXact family of handheld spectrophotometers now includes a Spot Color Tone Value (SCTV) feature.
Supporting the latest ISO 20654 standard, the eXact SCTV configuration allows commercial and package printers to verify tone value for spot colours that correlate well with visual appearance. With this latest firmware update to the eXact family, printers will be able to more easily verify both spot and process colours that brands specify using the new standard.
‘X-Rite now provides SCTV support across our eXact family, IntelliTrax2 and ColorCert Suite 3.0 process control software, providing customers with the colour management and workflow tools required to meet evolving industry standards, better formulate inks and take into account the effect of substrates on colour,’ said Ray Cheydleur, Printing and Imaging Product Portfolio Manager, X-Rite. ‘With X-Rite solutions, customers can feel confident they have the most accurate and consistent colour measurement instruments on the market.’
The software update to eXact enables users to separately configure the tone value formula for spot colours as well as CMYK. Configurations are available for Tone Value, Tone Value Increase (TVI) or dot gain, TVI Table and Print Characteristics. This makes it easier for printers when measuring both spot colours and the process colours used in extended colour gamut printing.
A new search function in eXact provides faster and easier access to colour standards such as Pantone. Users can now select Pantone or a standard from another colour library, by name or number. Additional updates are designed to further improve the user experience.
‘X-Rite has added functionality for SCTV that can create equidistant visual appearance of tints aligned with PDF and Adobe and other creation software,’ said Steve Smiley, Principle, SmileyColor and Associates LLC. ‘This allows for common appearance curve for spot colour printing and alignment across digital print, proofing, flexo, offset and gravure. The X-Rite solution can be setup to always use traditional Murray-Davies for CMYK and SCTV for spot delivery as shown to the user in a single screen. As our industry is printing more spot and extended gamut work, the addition of SCTV will save time, waste and improve communications from design through print.’
