Alwan’s ColorHub, Print-Standardizer and PrintVerifier products now communicate more effectively with each other, said the company, making it simpler to verify colour standards have been matched and to inform customers of this.
“They are now communicating completely both ways, instead of communicating a bit with each other,” said head of business development Europe Menno Mooy.
It is also possible to add a new multicolour option to each product, allowing special colours to be verified to an ISO standard along with process colours.
This upgrade is aimed at commercial and packaging printers as well as those working on speciality products such as carpets, ceramics and textiles, where colour matching is key.
It has been spurred, said Alwan, by the imminent publishing of the new colour standard enabling colour reproduction across different printing technologies, ISO 15339, with the Alwan Color Expertise Color Suite v5.0 named the “McDowell Suite” after Dave McDowell, editor of this standard.
“One key reason for launching this now is that print runs are coming down so people need to switch between special spot colours more often,” said Mooy. “Before people would have to clean their presses to make that switch to ensure colour accuracy. With multicolour you can leave seven colours in the press and still be confident of meeting the correct colour standard.”
He added: “Another reason is that people are using many more different technologies now. I know a label printer, for example, who may use three different technologies to print one label.”
The unique selling point of Alwan software is its simplicity, said Mooy. “Others have been doing this sort of thing for years, but we make it very simple. With our system you apply colour management and then you verify it which is very important to brands. Our products have always been about making colour simple to control. We are still coming from that background.”
The cost of adding the multicolour option to an Alwan package varies according to the software, but Mooy revealed it would cost around an extra €2,000 (£1,700) to add this to an €8,000-€10,000 package.
The new interconnected and multicolour options will be commercially available in two to three months, said the firm, with trials at several customers currently taking place.
