Version 10 of the software comes in five flavours, each aimed at a different application: Ceramic, Décor, Packaging, Textile and Lab Edition for industrial printers.
Founder and chief executive Thomas Kirschner said all were based on its Productionserver software, developed over 10 years, but had been tailored for each sector.
“If you print on concrete slabs it’s an inline process and you need white primer and a varnish on top all in a single pass, but the colouration is not so crucial. If you print a logo on a bottle the brand owner will be very critical of colour. If you’re printing a wood pattern on boards it needs to be the same in January or June so they match,” he said.
ColorGate, based in Germany, is also showing a new portable version of its Rapid Spectro Cube (RSC) colour measurement system, a prototype of which generated lots of interest last year at Fespa in Cologne.
The device, which costs €25,000, is portable and comes in a flight case. It can be used to scan surfaces in situ. Together with Productionserver it can help develop products from design to print.
“Last year it was a big box. Everyone at Fespa said make it portable and we’ll buy it, because we need to move it around. So we developed it with a flight case manufacturer.
“It’s the first instrument that can measure colours from a wide variety of products, it can read from ceramics and wooden surfaces. It also captures extremely small objects.”
The RSC creates an ICC profile for each printing situation, profiling the printer being used, the ink and the substrate “like a fingerprint” so the colour scanned can be more accurately reproduced and matched, for example a design of a wallpaper to match a floor tile.
Complementing these two products is Colorizer, colouration software for the designers of industrial digital printed products such as ceramics, interior design and textiles, where the conversion to production CMYK takes place in the software, enabling an easier and more accurate transition.
The products will be available through ColorGate’s dealer network.
