Esko (www.esko.com) is pleased to announce the successful implementation
of its Esko Equinox extended gamut solution by Pragati Offset, India’s
pioneering print innovator based in Hyderabad. Equinox is Esko’s solution for
the implementation of extended gamut – or fixed inkset – printing, and a
recipient of the prestigious 2014 InterTech Technology Awards.
Esko Equinox Expanded Color Gamut (ECG) is a patented
technology for converting packaging graphics from CMYK and spot color to a
seven-color process. It is applied in the prepress department when preparing
jobs for press. Converting entire files results in extremely close matches to
spot colors, improved pictorial images, and the ability to print more colors
than available ink stations on the press, resulting in improved image quality
and brand impact. The major benefit, however, is realized in the pressroom as
jobs print more economically and more consistently.
Mr. Harsha Paruchuri, Director of Pragati Offset, speaks
about his early interest in Equinox: “I saw this solution in an early beta
stage at the EskoWorld Conference in Tampa, Florida, about four years ago. It
struck me as highly interesting, even at that stage. Taking a large seven-color
gamut and having the software convert an artwork with any number of PANTONE or
RGB images to those seven colors (or six or five, depending on what you want)
sounded interesting.”
Since the CMYK color space lacks in the green, orange and
blue-violet areas, adding these three inks to expand the color space makes
sense. A seven-color strategy is made after measurement of the test forms. The
set-up and maintenance of the profiles and strategies are the main work. Equinox
conversion can be done in Esko’s prepress editors with the ability to manually
interact and change some of the conversions, or it can be set up in the ticket
and done automatically by the RIP during the normalization. There is also an
Adobe® Photoshop® plug-in for interactively converting images to seven colors.
Mr. Paruchuri explains how Pragati Offset uses Equinox:
“Once the profiles are made, it’s almost a ‘push of the button’ solution as far
as spot colors are concerned as the images are processed automatically to
create a seven-color separation set. And since we have a complete Esko workflow,
Equinox fits in seamlessly.”
Mr. Paruchuri also shares the thought process that went into
installing two new seven-color plus coater offset presses at the end of 2013:
“We believed an additional unit would give us more flexibility as we already
print a lot of six-color jobs and there were times when we felt an additional color
would improve the quality and consistency. Equinox certainly played a role in
our decision to order these new seven-color presses.”
Benefits of expanded color gamut reproduction
The ability to create an infinite number of colors from
seven process colors promotes “gang” press runs – and the economic savings can
surpass a million dollars per press each year. Customers using Equinox ECG
technology report that they use seven-color process profitably in a production environment
for offset cartons as well as for flexible packaging and labels. This has
enabled many of the world’s largest consumer product companies to convert
entire product lines to expanded gamut.
In the past 17 years, Pragati Offset has become one of the
leading packaging and label printers in India, winning many national and
international awards. While the company sees the use of Equinox as hugely
advantageous for offset printed cartons and label printing on its 8 color
flexographic presses, it feels that Equinox is the right solution for any
project with high gamut requirements from garment catalogues, coffee table and
paint swatch books, and even calendars and diaries. “We’ve also recently used
it for a wedding card that included a reproduction of an MF Husain painting
that contained rich oranges and blues,” says Mr. Paruchuri.
Pragati Offset is very clear about the benefits of using
this innovation to match a wide variety of brand and spot colors including many
PANTONE shades with a fixed set of 7 inks and without having to wash up a press
for every job. “A lot of time and money can be saved by not having to wash a
million dollar press for 15 to 20 minutes to get the correct shade. The
productivity gains by not having to wash-up and change inks are significant,
especially if there are a lot of shorter run jobs,” states Mr. Paruchuri.
Shrihari Rao, Esko’s Sales Director for India, is pleased
that Equinox has found resonance with one of the world’s most innovative
printers. “It is only fitting that Esko Equinox is in the capable hands of a
printer who continues to win awards and gain enormous global recognition for
its quality and innovation,” Mr. Rao concludes.
