Conti Print has become the seventh company in the world and the first outside of Germany to receive a Fogra PSD Cert. PSD Cert or Process Standard Digital (PSD) was recently developed by Fogra. It is the description of an industrially orientated and standardised procedure for the creation of digital print production.
The company installed a MGI Meteor digital press. In line with their policy of conformance to the ISO standards laid down for print production, they decided to install ORIS Press Matcher // Web to handle the colour management of the newly created digital print department. Already having set their litho presses to print to ISO 12647-2 and proofing to certify to ISO 12647-7 standard (with Fogra Cert for Contract Proofing), they set out to achieve the same high standard for digital print. With the help of DigitalView, the company achieved the Fogra PSD Cert.
The PSD is in conformance with the international standardization – ISO 15311 – currently being developed. Using the PSD certificate, printers can show their quality approach and the overall understanding of the output processes. Successful implementation of the PSD provides printers with the benefits of improved cost, quality and time performance, with better sustainability and reduced waste.
Laura Minter of DigitalView received her Fogra Cert training earlier this year and was the first person in South Africa to achieve PSD Partner status. Working with ContiPrint to get PSD Cert status was made easy because of the fact that they have chosen to work with products that help to achieve the results required. Without the ORIS colour management system, the quality requirements of PSD would be very difficult to achieve. ORIS Press Matcher // Web and ORIS Color Tuner // Web provide the software tools to setup the output hardware to produce accurate as well as consistent colour – what is printed today can be printed next week or next month to the same colour quality level.
In order to achieve PSD, ContiPrint needed to go through the steps laid down by Fogra. Firstly, their different output processes were examined to ensure that they achieved a consistent print quality. Secondly, they were tested on their ability to print consistent colour on a regular basis – this means print jobs were evaluate to ensure that colour accuracy is maintained on an on-going basis. Thirdly, their entire workflow was subject to critical scrutiny for its capacity for sustained achievement of consistent print quality and colour fidelity.
Angus Carlaw, Managing Director at ContiPrint, said, The benefits of Fogra PSD and in fact standardisation in general are, increased production reliability – jobs go through the different stages of the production workflow so much smoother. This amounts to reduced costs in terms of time and materials and at the end of the day our customers benefit from improved quality of their product, delivery when promised.
CONTIPRINT (+27 11) 334 1484 Dolf Strydom dolf@contiprint.co.za
