The course, Media Profiling for Wide & Large Format Print, costs £45 and will be delivered by Rob Griffith, technical director of The Colour Collective and author of Practical Colour Management.

Griffith said that the course would appeal to anyone who hasn't done colour management before, as well as those who have tried it but not achieved the results they expected, plus any printers who want to research what's possible before getting external help with implementing colour management.

"I will tailor it to the experience level in the room," he added. "At the end of the day colour management is about quality assurance so it's important for company's to take a long-term view to achieve the best result.

"That could either be getting someone external in fairly regularly or getting the training that will allow them to take ownership of their own colour quality.

"The success we've had training both large and small printing companies to colour manage their workflow has proven that empowering end-users to take control of their colour quality saves them both time and money, in addition to improving their end results."

He added that the specific challenges for wide-format printers were in the wide range of substrates available as well as the different kinds of output device.

"The material you're printing onto can have a big impact and that can range from banners, to translucent materials, to cloth," said Griffith. "The other thing most companies struggle with is getting consistency across different types of output, including large-format litho, solvent and UV inkjet printers."

Griffith said that the upfront investment cost for printers to be able to do their own colour management would be around £1,600 for a handheld spectrophotometer, such as X-Rite's i1Publish Pro 2, which would then allow them to create their own ICC colour profiles.

"The i1 will profile pretty much anything - the only thing it won't do is backlit media, which is where you need something specialist like the Barbieri Spectro LFP," he said.

Media Profiling for Wide & Large Format Print will take place from 10:30am to 3:30pm at X-Rite's UK headquarters in Poynton, Chesire. Course modules will include: colour theory; how colour management works; print options, linearisation & ink limiting; creating profiles; workflows; spot colour matching; evaluating colour & fine tuning results; and a Q&A session.

Delegates are also encouraged to bring questions and issues for open discussion on common workflow problems.