Topic of your interest

Topics
Every single person at Fogra stands for research, testing and certification.
Chart 7C colour space

Printing standard for seven-colour offset packaging printing

Short name: Printing standard for packaging printing

Fogra no. 32.176
Project leader: J. Gemeinhardt
Funding: BMWK (IGF) via AiF

 

Timescale: 01.09.2021 - 30.11.2023

Research Report

Objective and relevance

Working with variable spot colours has many disadvantages from an economic point of view. These can be avoided if multicolour printing is operated with a fixed set of seven primary colours (CMYKOGV).

However, exploiting its potential is associated with major challenges. Therefore, the planned research project is intended to support print service providers in its introduction and working in daily practice.

Fogra employee Jürgen Gemeinhardt

Jürgen Gemeinhardt

Head of Printing Techniques

+49 89 431 82 - 256

Get in touch

Your contact

I would be pleased to answer your questions about the project and look forward to exchanging ideas with you.

Solution steps

OGV printing inks, folding boxboard and label papers on the market are to be characterised in the laboratory. Extensive printing tests are also planned on the sheet-fed offset press at Fogra. Different ink sequences and screening algorithms will be used. In addition, the new SCTV method is to be applied with the aim of achieving linear tone value behaviour in printing.

Colour trace

Achieved results

A proposal for a standard for seven-colour offset printing was developed. This comprises an ink standard and a process standard. The ink standard is based on ISO 2846-1. It defines target colour values for OGV on a reference paper within a certain film thickness range and transparency.

The process standard is similar to ISO 12647-2. It describes a substrate category as well as solid tone colours and tone value increases of the primary colours on practice papers. KVCGMOY is recommended as the printing sequence. To avoid moiré effects, the spot colours OGV must be screened non-periodically (FM).