Many brands have their own specific colors, and use color to establish the brand's image and credibility in the customer, such as Alipay's blue and WeChat green. Some big brands have multiple product lines, and there are many foundries and many places. As we all know, the color will change with the influence of many factors, such as paper, ink performance, equipment maintenance, color management of prepress printing and the actual technical ability of printing companies. As a brand color maintainer, we have learned a lot of color control solutions in the past, such as using Pan Tongshu, giving standard data, but through practice and learning, these are not enough, so we continue to explore more reasonable control solutions.

For spot color control, because the understanding, expectations and practitioners' perceptions of different brands will be different, different schemes will be adopted to control their own spot colors. This article will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of several common spot color control methods, hoping to learn from readers.

On-site confirmation of control plan analysis

When confirming on-site, brand owners often have their own engineers or commission third-party professional organizations to confirm. The advantage is that the expectations of the brand can be accurately and efficiently achieved; the disadvantage is that it takes time and costs, and can only solve the color problem of a single project, and cannot be copied to other projects produced by other factories without cost.

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Analysis of Pan Tongshu's Control Plan

01, Pan Tongshu control advantages

Controlling spot colors through Pan Tongshu is a common solution for brand packaging personnel. The advantages are as follows:

(1) Pan Tongshu's color control has great influence and is particularly convenient in communication. Anyone who prints color management is familiar with Pan Tongshu and Pantong color code, so when the brand offers the Pantone color code, the printing company can Clearly know what color it wants;

(2) The operation is particularly convenient;

(3) The number of colors is large, and generally the color to be used can be found in the color card.

02, Pan Tongshu control shortcomings

What are the shortcomings of controlling through Pan Tongshu?

(1) There are many uncontrollable factors in the actual production process of color. Even the different batches of Pantong books made by Pantong Company will have different differences, and some colors may have great differences, not to mention different. The Pantong book produced in the year. For example, Figure 1 shows the Pantone color card PMS 116C produced in different years. It can be found through visual observation that the color difference is very large, and the data also has a big difference (Figure 2). (The picture is provided by a third party and obtained from professional channels. );

Figure 1 Visual difference of Pantone color card PMS 116C produced in different years

Figure 2 Pantang color card PMS 116C data difference produced in different years

(2) The Pantong books purchased by printing enterprises are uneven, many of which are obtained through informal channels, and the use of colors is certainly not guaranteed;

(3) The price of a set of Pantong books is quite high. The cost of a set (two) purchased by Pantone from the United States is $500.

Based on the existence of some shortcomings, in order to control our color well, we must let all printing companies purchase the same batch of Pantong books. In fact, the cost of a set of Pantong books is so high, and the input-output ratio is seriously out of balance.

Analysis of Electronic Pantone Control Plan

The electronic Pantong name is to control the color through electronic data, that is, the brand provides the Lab value of a spot color, and the printing company controls the spot color according to the Lab value. In theory, numerical matching, in addition to the problem of metamerism, can basically solve all problems, but the actual situation is not as imagined.

01, electronic Pantong management advantages

(1) The numerical standard is simple and clear;

(2) The numerical standard is theoretically objective;

(3) Management costs are very low, and it can be said that there is basically no management cost.

02, electronic Pantong management shortcomings

(1) The management of numerical standards requires high professional knowledge of practitioners, while the knowledge of practitioners in general product factories is relatively small;

(2) When the phenomenon of metamerism occurs, there is no way to find it;

(3) There are differences in the types of testing instruments of printing companies, and the maintenance level of the same models is different. The performance of testing instruments must be uneven. A certain measuring instrument is used to measure a certain color (L is 24.28, a is -5.97, b is -32.15), and the values are shown in Tables 1-2. It can be seen from the table that the measured values of different types of testing instruments vary greatly. Since the same type of test instrument is the latest X-rite eXact, the difference in measured values is relatively small. It can be seen that printing companies must maintain and update their own testing instruments, which require high costs. As a result, there are uncontrollable factors in the printing enterprise, which poses a considerable challenge to the data management of the spot color electronic Pantone.

Table 1 Measurement values of different types of testing instruments

Table 2 Same type test instrument measurement value

Based on the analysis of the above three different methods, the problems we have to solve are:

(1) Due to the need for on-site confirmation or the high cost incurred by the printing company to purchase the same batch of Pantong books;

(2) The difference between the year of purchase of Pantongshu and the standard channels produced by the printing company;

(3) Errors in the type and degree of maintenance of the test instrument;

(4) Difficulties in communication and control caused by lack of knowledge in the color of the product factory practitioners.

Homemade color card

Based on the above questions, through learning and thinking, we believe that the defects of using Pantongshu are only the difference between different batches and years of production. If we can produce a batch of color cards ourselves, we can solve the above problems.

01, the advantages of homemade color card

(1) Although Pan Tongshu has thousands of colors, but we can't use 5 percent of the colors inside, and the color cards needed to make them can greatly reduce the invalid expenses of using Pan Tongshu;

(2) The color card can evaluate the condition of the plant equipment. By measuring the color card for data feedback, we can get a good understanding of the performance of the equipment used by each printing company;

(3) Easy to carry;

(4) No need to worry about the difference between devices;

(5) Brand owners are largely working with product factories, and most of the product factory employees do not have this knowledge, which can solve some of their doubts;

(6) The quality of the printing enterprise personnel is uneven. Although some personnel have rich experience, they do not necessarily have enough theoretical knowledge. It is difficult to carry out color control according to the electronic Pantone value. The color card can be used to understand the customer more intuitively. standard;

(7) Because some colors are difficult to control, printing enterprise personnel will have some psychological rejection and dissatisfaction due to some uncontrollable factors such as using different brands of paper. The self-made color card makes the color easier to control, thus reducing the psychological pressure of the printing enterprise personnel;

(8) Self-made color cards can save a lot of money compared to the purchase of Pantong books.

02, the shortcomings of homemade color cards

(1) Because the color will produce dry retreat phenomenon, it is necessary to produce a batch of color cards with the same color, and at the same time to reach the target value, the production technology requirements are very high;

(2) It is easy to damage.

03, difficult to overcome

Based on the two shortcomings of the homemade color card, we have done a lot of learning and thinking.

(1) Technical solution: In order to produce a completely consistent color card, we have made a lot of evaluations on the performance of the ink, paper and printing machine used, and explored the dry retreat law of the ink used by a printing company to overcome the production target. Technical problems of color cards;

(2) Resolving the damage of the color card: By adding and confirming the confirmation of the performance of the test instrument, it is notified that the printing enterprise receives the color card for the first time, and the standard value of the device is used, that is, the value of the spot color needs to be controlled by the device. Thereby solving the standard difference caused by the damage of the color card.

Of course, the management of color through self-made color cards also requires the brand's practitioners to have certain technical capabilities.

For spot color control, based on the actual situation of the brand, if the brand product line is small and the quantity is large, the use of on-site confirmation scheme is a good solution;

If the brand can do centralized purchasing, use less printing companies, and uniform procurement of the same batch of Pan Tongshu is a good solution;

If the printing company or product factory used by the brand has strong professional knowledge and the number of printing enterprises used is small, the electronic Pantone management and control scheme can be used completely, and the difference in performance of the testing instrument can be uniformly corrected, and the cost is the lowest;

Of course, similar to our need to use a large number of printing companies, and there are cross-regional situations, homemade color cards are a low-cost, more effective solution.

Therefore, in the end, which option is chosen to manage the spot color of the own brand, it is necessary to combine the supply chain situation of the home and consider whether the input and output are reasonable.

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