Consistent brand colour management made possible

Edited by the Marketingservicestalk editorial team Oct 30, 2007

Brand owners can predict how their corporate spot colours will reproduce on a wide variety of substrates with the SmartColour portfolio of colour management tools from Sun Chemical.

Sun Chemical has conducted the first European demonstrations of the SmartColour software system and announced limited sales releases of the new solution.

SmartColour allows packaging developers to see real colour end results anywhere in their workflow, by displaying real ink colour on the chosen substrate and matching the desired colour with the ink that will deliver the brand colour on retailer shelves.

"When packaging developers and printers miss the mark in attempting to match a brand's spot colour, the error may appear at the proofing stage - leading to multiple proofs and adjustments before the customer approves the job," said Patrice Aurenty, Business Leader, Colour Management, Sun Chemical Europe.

"Such mistakes are not only expensive, but they also lead to delays in product release and order fulfillment, mounting up losses in sales".

The SmartColour system lets brand owners, designers, prepress companies and converters organise, standardise, digitise and integrate brand colour management into their packaging and production workflow.

The system brings together a combination of consulting support, customised brand colour standards, software and database systems, and online collaboration tools to create a user friendly and truly revolutionary approach to managing spot colours.

A key component of the system, SmartColour iVue, takes the guesswork out of matching the spot colour with the substrate on the computer monitor to get the exact colour brand owners require in the earliest design phase.

Operating as an Adobe Photoshop plug-in, iVue relies upon the massive Sun Chemical colour database of real ink colours, on common packaging substrates printed by relevant printing processes, allowing users to consider multiple alternatives to deliver a specified brand colour on one or more packaging materials.