Digital Press Colour Control with X-Rite Solutions
Digital printing has transformed the commercial print industry - enabling short run production, variable data printing, and fast turnaround that offset printing cannot match for small quantities. But digital presses have their own colour management challenges that X-Rite solutions are specifically equipped to address. Understanding how X-Rite instruments and software support colour control on digital presses helps digital print operations deliver consistent, accurate colour that meets the same professional standards as traditional offset production.
Digital presses - including inkjet, toner-based, and electrophotographic systems - do not behave like offset presses in their colour response. Where offset press colour is primarily controlled through ink density and dot gain, digital press colour depends on complex interactions between the digital engine's RIP (raster image processor), the toner or ink set, the media, and the fuser or curing system. These interactions produce colour that can vary between runs, between media types, and as the digital press's components age. Without systematic colour management, digital press output can drift significantly from run to run, undermining the consistency that customers expect from professional digital printing.
The foundation of colour management for digital presses is accurate ICC profiling - building a colour profile that precisely describes the press's colour response on each specific media type, and using that profile to drive colour-accurate output from the RIP. X-Rite's i1Pro spectrophotometer is the standard tool for measuring the printed test charts used to build these profiles, and X-Rite's i1Profiler software processes the measurement data into professional-grade ICC profiles. The combination produces profiles that are significantly more accurate than the generic media profiles typically bundled with digital press systems - profiles that actually characterise the specific press, media, and consumables combination in use, rather than a generic approximation. The X-Rite product range is available through Seaga Group in Australia.
Maintaining Consistency Over Time
The accuracy of a digital press ICC profile degrades as the press's components age and as consumables (toner, ink, developer units) are replaced. Each new consumable lot may have slightly different colour characteristics from the previous one, and the press's fuser or curing system changes as it warms up, wears, and is maintained. Without regular recalibration and reprofiling, the gap between the stored ICC profile and the press's actual colour behaviour gradually widens - producing colour that is subtly but progressively wrong.
Regular G7 calibration - a methodology that targets standardised grey balance and neutral tone reproduction as the foundation of accurate colour - is widely adopted for digital press colour management. X-Rite instruments support G7 calibration workflows, providing the measurement data needed to calibrate the press's neutral response and verify that the result matches the G7 target. Once the grey balance is calibrated, the ICC profile built on that calibration foundation is more stable and more accurate than a profile built on an uncalibrated press.
The eXact 2 spectrophotometer or handheld spectrophotometers can be used for routine production verification on digital presses - measuring colour control patches printed alongside live jobs and verifying that the digital press's output is tracking within the expected tolerance range. When a deviation is detected, the measurement data guides the technician's investigation - whether the issue is consumable-related, media-related, or requiring a profile rebuild.
Colour Matching Across Digital and Offset
A common challenge in hybrid print operations - those running both offset and digital presses - is maintaining colour consistency between the two process types when different jobs in the same product range are produced on different equipment. A brand colour that looks one way on offset may look slightly different on digital unless both processes are managed to the same L*a*b* target.
X-Rite's measurement-based approach addresses this cross-process colour matching challenge directly. By measuring colour from both processes against the same stored L*a*b* target, quality managers can verify cross-process consistency and identify any gap between offset and digital colour output. When a gap exists, the digital press's profile or calibration can be adjusted to bring it into alignment with the offset standard - or vice versa - providing cross-process colour harmony that brand owners and customers can see and trust.
Color iQC software enables cross-process colour management by centralising measurement data from multiple press types and providing comparative analysis tools that make process differences visible and quantifiable. For digital print operations whose customers also receive offset-printed materials elsewhere in their brand program, this cross-process measurement capability is a meaningful quality advantage.
Conclusion
X-Rite solutions provide the ICC profiling tools, calibration methodology support, and production measurement capability needed for professional colour management on digital presses. By applying the same systematic, measurement-based approach to digital press colour control as to offset press management, digital print operations can deliver consistent, brand-accurate colour that meets the same professional standards customers expect from offset production - and can document that quality in the measurement records that professional colour management requires.