Color: It’s All in the Process

A rising challenge is the increasing use by some printing companies of proprietary ink sets that cannot be adopted by many proofing systems—although the converter still must find a way to represent those colors in a proof. The challenge here, reports Harrell, “is to create a good separation of a photo using replacement inks.” Kaleidoscope, the device-independent color engine in all Esko-Graphics’ Scope workflow environments, performs color-matching operations within Esko’s FlexRip and creates ICC profiles for image retouching. As a centralized color management system, however, Kaleidoscope also goes beyond ICC profiling by enabling its color tools to be used in any combination of process and special inks, including multi-color process and other non-CMYK color sets like opaque and metallic. Kaleidoscope is fully integrated with Esko-Graphics’ IntelliCurve, FlexRip’s dot gain control engine. Esko-Graphics’ InkWizard converts jobs to any target color space, using Esko PackEdge as a host application. Off-the-shelf color sets (e.g., Pantone Hexachrome, Opaltone, FM6) and custom color sets are supported.