Can I Have Your Recipe?

In the world of packaging, CMYK is an appetizer, whetting but no longer satisfying end-users’ growing appetite for color. It stands to reason: color is arguably the most identifiable and valuable of all the assets associated with a given brand. And not just any color, but intense, vibrant color that differentiates a company from its competition, creates an irresistible emotional connection with the consumer; color that is the key component of high-impact graphics designed to grab a consumer’s attention and hold it long enough to trigger a purchase decision.

With its limited gamut and ability to simulate only about 60 percent of standard Pantone colors, however, the four-color process system packs insufficient marketing punch for many packaging applications. Designers are constantly frustrated when printing in CMYK alone, as it permits just four color (halftone) combinations, and therefore can reproduce only a limited range of hues. Working with spot colors also can be costly and time-consuming. A more aesthetically rewarding and cost-effective option is to alter or add two or more special colors to the standard four-color process set (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) in order to augment or “extend” the standard gamut and enable the press to print a wider range of colors.

For the printer/converter, using one set of inks can effectively reproduce a vast number of spot colors while reducing the number of press runs, wash-ups, and inks involved. Fewer changeovers also yields greater consistency over the length of the print run. For the package designer, extended color printing offers a greatly expanded palette and the promise of faithful reproduction of original art work. For the end user/CPC, payoff comes in the dramatic visual shelf impact that translates into dollars at the cash register. Granted, working with extended ink sets requires some adjustment, but the results clearly are worth the trouble for a growing number of printers and end users.

Living color

The six-color Hexachrome process, introduced by Pantone, Inc. more than a decade ago, uses customized CMYK inks, plus orange and green, enabling printers to achieve almost twice the color gamut of conventional CMYK inks, together with more natural skin tones, richer solids, and more accurate pastels and contone images than traditional four-color process.

Hexachrome’s combination of CMYK plus orange and green inks is said to extend the gamut dramatically when compared to four-color process printing. In most areas of the color spectrum, it reportedly meets or exceeds the gamut of RGB, meaning that designs created on-screen can be reproduced in print. Moreover, instead of changing the press every time a new spot color is needed, the press stays configured for Hexachrome, which simulates them. Over 90 percent of the spot colors found in the Pantone Formula Guide can be matched using Hexachrome. Requirements include a six-color press, access to a six-color proofing system, and specially formulated Hexachrome inks.

Labelad, a Canadian manufacturer of pressure-sensitive labels, flexible packaging, and related products for the health and beauty, beverage, pharmaceutical/nutraceutical, promotional and novelty markets, currently uses the Hexachrome process for about 20 percent of its projects, especially novelty stickers for children.

“To attract children we needed to be able to print bright colors that pop,” acknowledges Ken Norris, manager of customer service and graphics. “Four-color process wasn’t the greatest way to achieve them.” At the same time, “It was getting expensive to build Pantone colors with our eight 12-color presses.”

The company started looking at Hexachrome in the late 1990s, eventually becoming the first label printer in North America to become Hex-certified in 2002. “We worked with Pantone and our ink supplier, Sun Chemical, to develop ink densities and L.A.B. readings,” Norris reports.

Norris cites market pressure from China as among the factors that first prompted Labelad to explore the advantages of Hexachrome. Now, he says, “We can eliminate time- and labor-intensive 8-, 10- and 12-color makeready/washups just by swapping out the plates. The savings in makeready and job changeover can be substantial.”

A tough sell?

Mastering the Hexachrome process can be something of a workout, especially for flexo shops like Labelad. “Pantone gives you formulas and recipes, but sometimes we have to tweak them and create our own recipes” to account for the fact that the Hexachrome “cookbook” (Pantone Formula Guide) is offset-printed, Norris says.

Labelad often uses Esko-Graphics’ InkWizard module within its PackEdge packaging prepress system to remap multiple spot colors to the Hexachrome set and provide a preview of the color both before and after remapping. (InkWizard also can be used for other off-the-shelf color sets, including Opaltone and custom sets). Norris also reports that Hexachrome remains something of a tough sell to clients, perhaps due in part to the fact that implementation requires significant readjustment and training on the design side.

Disc Graphics, Hauppague, N.Y., has been a Hexachrome user for a decade and a Hexachrome Authorized Printer for four-and-a-half years. The company has won several regional awards and one national award for its use of Hexachrome.

For John Rebecchi, senior vice president, the chief advantage of extended color printing is twofold: “It not only gives us an opportunity to dramatically increase our color palette, but it yields time savings in makereadies and changeovers when running ganged forms. Instead of running them through the press several times, you do it only once. It’s less expensive to makeready a single pass than multiple passes.” In addition, he says, “Hexachrome screens and vignettes are very clean and crisp with no banding at all.”

Disc Graphics’ customers in the private label, entertainment, pharmaceutical, nutritional supplement, and vitamin markets are “well aware of, and support, our use of the six-color process simulation,” Rebecchi reports.

NBTY, Bohemia, N.Y., is not among the timid when it comes to extended color printing. The vertically integrated manufacturer and retailer of nutritional supplements was introduced to Hexachrome by one of its print vendors and now uses the Hexachrome process for about 25 percent of its package printing.

Says Marianne McManus, advertising and production manager, packaging, “Hexachrome is a more cost-effective option for us, allowing us to match PMS colors without spending more for spot color. The quality is good and the color is consistent for the volume of boxes we run. At the same time,” she says, “no special ink means fewer washups and less downtime.”

She points out that Hexachrome also gives printers an opportunity to combine or “gang up” different runs on the same form without paying for extra PMS colors, resulting in substantial cost savings to both the printer and the client. “There are vendors who choose to run process over Hexachrome,” McManus says, “but I don’t know why. There’s no downside.”

ColorSuite for Hexachrome provides the separation software and color reference guides essential to working in the large gamut, six-color Hexachrome process. ColorSuite comes with the Pantone Hexware 2.5.3 plug-in toolset for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Pantone Solid In Hexachrome guide, Pantone Color Bridge, Hexachrome test form and test form CD. Pantone Hexware supports Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Illustrator CS.

We’ll see your six and raise you one

Opaltone Digital Color, developed by Opaltone Graphic Solutions in 1998, is a seven-color reproduction system that mixes CMYK plus Opaltone Red, Green, and Blue in the halftone screens (not in the can) to achieve more than 2,800 colors without resorting to spot colors. Suitable for rotogravure, offset, and flexo presses, Opaltone Digital Color reportedly overcomes the saturation deficiencies in CMY inks, producing greater optical contrasts and richer, brighter color. For the printer, ink inventory for process work is slashed to only seven base colors: CMYKR’G’B’. Designers can look forward to the accurate reproduction of their artwork, absent the limitations of traditional CMYK.

Opaltone effectively transforms an eight-color press into a press that can print “up to 20 or 30 colors, maybe more,” says Jim Barnhart, president of Package Printing Co., Inc., West Springfield, Mass. The converter of packaging for the food, pharma, confectionery, and produce markets has been an Opaltone user for the past three years. “We do 40 percent Opaltone at the present time and hope to be doing 60 percent in 2007,” Barnhart says.

According to Barnhart, Opaltone opens up the number of colors a printer can hit. At the same time, he says, “You keep the anilox roll in the same station and same color, and basically just retain your cylinders.”

Like Disc Graphics’ Rebecchi and NBTY’s McManus, Barnhart points to the economic benefit derived from being able to run multiple SKUs across the web. With Opaltone, he says, “There’s no need to change inks or aniloxes when you change jobs or designs (because) you’re not mixing inks or fiddling with density’s anymore. The plate separation, aniloxes, and inks combine to create the accurate color image.” As a result, “Each set up takes less time and there are fewer set ups.” Inventories of ink and anilox rolls are also reduced.

There are some technical issues that need to be addressed in order to implement the Opaltone process effectively. For example, “If you can’t hold register within +/-0.003”, you’re going to have trouble,” Barnhart cautions. That said, “Opaltone sounds complicated, but it’s actually not, once you get it down,” he says. “You do need to stick to disciplined actions throughout the process—but the results are well worth the effort.”

American Safety Razor (ASR), Cedar Knolls, N.J., a manufacturer of private label personal care consumer products, preferred to run four-color process before being introduced to Opaltone last year. “Four-color process didn’t afford us the enhanced colors that pop,” explains Marilyn Massari, marketing services manager for ASR.

Now, with access to Opaltone-qualified printers as well as to another vendor that uses its own six-color custom ink set, ASR enjoys the cost benefits associated with extended gamut printing, including the ability to gang-run small volumes, faster makereadies, and fewer changeovers. “The ink simply stays in the system without changeover or washup,” Massari says.

Despite the obvious benefits of extended color technology, opinions differ as to how many printers are actually using it. Adds Massari, “The drawback to extended color in general and Opaltone in particular is that not a lot of printers are doing it, so there are a limited number of vendors (CPCs) can go to.”

Now that sounds like an opportunity. pP