ISO 12647-3:2013 Quality standard for newspaper production 2 WORLD pRinteRs Forum INTRODUCTION Newspaper production standards deliver clear and Manfred manageable guidelines for printers worldwide. Stan- werfel, dardization became a great tool to create consistency across different print plants. It is a unique commu- deputy Ceo nication platform between print buyers, ad agencies, & exeCutive prepress designers and printers. The WAN-IFRA direCtor - International Newspaper Color Quality Club promotes global events, standardized color reproduction and is a tool in itself to implement and maintain control over reproduction wan-ifra processes within the value chain of newspaper color production. The WAN-IFRA generic newspaper ICC print profile Nowadays every two minutes people take more photos meanwhile is part of hundreds of newspaper print than in the entire 19th century. Currently it is assumed specifications all over. It is included in many software that 2.5 billion people around the world use a digital packages that manage the digital production workflow camera, most of them as part of a smartphone. and pre-flight the color data delivered by different sources. The international norms make printing and Digital color creation has exploded with digital mobile print buying easier and lower the costs for printers and technology and this reflects on the needs of processing their customers by avoiding confusion and misunder- digital color for publishing. News media have to cope standings. with a huge amount of data from countless sources, which requires well organized color management and In January 2015 the WAN-IFRA World Printers Fo- data handling. rum Board decided to intensify working in the area of print standardization in cooperation with newspaper Advertisers create and deliver digital color materials printers worldwide. A new version of the newspaper to many recipients like digital advertising platforms, ICC color profile was developed and tested by the television, glossy magazines, outdoor billboards and Swedish Graphic Companies’ Federation in coopera- newspapers. Each advertising channel is based on tion with WAN-IFRA. This new version adapts the another color display technology and hence requires modifications of ISO 12647-3:2013 especially with color conversion to assure the best possible and best regard to reduced total ink coverage. matching results on each platform. Color management and color space conversion is a daily requirement and Also, the World Printers Forum Board decided to up- inherent tool of digital and print color reproduction date the WAN-IFRA report on “Revision of ISO 12647- systems. 3” (Special Report 2.37, 2005) accordingly. WAN-IFRA Research Manager Anand Srinivasan authored this Print standardization based on agreed international new WAN-IFRA report. norms like ISO 12647-3 has been a great success for newspaper printing worldwide. In conjunction with We present this report now to the newspaper print the development of “full color printing” based on community in June 2015 and encourage readers to process colors (CMYK) replacing the old spot color comment and discuss questions of newspaper print concept in newspaper production the first ISO newspa- standardization on the World Printers Forum web- per print standard was released in 1998 and improved site. The Online Forum has been established for the over time. exchange of information for everyone interested in questions of newspaper production: http://forum.wan- Newspaper printers embraced the uniform interna- ifra.org/forums/world-printers-online-forum. tional standard quickly as a matter of course since they were used to standardized and straight forward production since ever. The implementation of the the standard in real life paid back in the years since then. ISO 12647-3:2013 3 >: Imprint iso 12647-3:2013, quality standard for newspaper production published by: WAN-IFRA rotfeder-ring 11 60327 frankfurt, germany CEO: vincent peyrègne director of publications: dean roper world printers forum executive director: Manfred werfel author: anand srinivasan editorial assistance/copy editing: dean roper, brian veseling, anton Jolkovski contact info: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] 4 WORLD pRinteRs Forum >: CONTENTContent: chapter 1: why standardise? 7 chapter 2: screen definition & color separation 13 chapter 3: print production 19 chapter 4: tonal value curve 25 chapter 5: introducing the new standard 29 chapter 6: quality control mechanism 33 ISO 12647-3:2013 5 About ThE WorlD printers Forum he World Printers Forum within The World Printers Forum has also launched WAN-IFRA aims to be the central an online forum, an exchange platform for T point of the international news media discussing, informing and debating all topics print community, including printers, materi- related to newspaper production. The Forum als suppliers and equipment manufacturers is open to everyone and is free to use. for the print production value chain from prepress to press and to product finishing The online forum is an ideal exchange plat- and delivery. form for newspaper production experts to voice their opinion, share technical knowl- It addresses all print related questions. Its edge and learn from other experts. objective is to encourage innovation and productivity as well as product development To join our network go to that can be instrumental for publishers to ex- ploit future oriented news media products. It www.wan-ifra.org/wpf promotes the power of print and the sustain- ability of print production. 6 WORLD pRinteRs Forum chapter 1 - why standardise? IS standardisation necessary for A product with such A Short life Span? ISO 12647-3:2013 7 why standardise? n the last 20 years, there has been a United States, South America and India. All dramatic increase in colour printing in the aforementioned initiatives are modelled Ithe newspaper industry. Black and white along the lines of the ISO 12647-3 interna- pages are getting rare and many newspapers tional newspaper printing standard, which across the globe have increased their color provides minimum quality requirement for printing capacity and print all color newspa- newspaper production. pers. Printing all pages color has become a fundamental feature of newspaper printing. The ISO 12647-3 newspaper standard has been existence for sixteen years. The stan- Globally, we notice a decline in the revenues dard was first developed and introduced in that newspapers make from print. Adver- 1998, when color printing started becoming tisement revenues are shrinking. Still, print popular in newspaper industry. Every five accounts for 93% of newspaper revenues. years, ISO standards are examined for possi- Print is the unique selling point of a news ble revision to introduce improvements, take publisher and is still very strong. Publishers into account new technical developments should make the most of print. An attractive, and react to changed market needs. For this high quality printed product is the key. reason, the ISO Technical Committee 130 (TC 130), which is responsible for develop- It can be argued that the lifespan of a news- ing graphic standards, revised the standard paper is few hours or at most one day. Why in 2005 and in late 2013. This report aims is print quality important for such a short to provide complete details about the actual lived product? It is true that readers do not revision and how a printer can implement spot or complain about many quality errors. the standard in the workplace. However, for a reader, the clarity of pictures and advertisements are very important and A key point that was always debated is, do over time, the readers develop an overall newspaper printing plants want to distin- assessment about the quality of a newspaper. guish themselves by printing quality or do On the other hand, newspaper advertisers they want to satisfy customer demands by are very critical about quality errors. Unless guaranteeing a minimum standard of qual- a publisher provides an excellent reading ity? There are many printers, who believe and advertising experience, it is difficult to that they can print better than the mini- retain them. Bad reproduction results in mum standards set by ISO 12647-3. While loss of readers and many free make goods. this may be true in a number of cases the Therefore, there is a tremendous pressure on first aim of newspaper printers should be to newspapers to standardise. improve color printing with the help of the general standard instead trying to print bet- For a long time, there were only a few ter than the standard. After mastering the standards in the graphics industry. In the standardisation process with ISO 12647-3, 19th century it was still common place to printers are free to better it. have different type heights for hot-metal composition. It was not possible to exchange What does the new ISO standard for type between printing plants. This situation newspaper printing bring? meant that it was even necessary to build customised printing presses. However, these The ISO 12647-3:2013 has made some sig- costs were willingly accepted in the hope of nificant revisions to the 2005 version of the keeping competitors at bay. That this is so standard. illustrated by the fact that the question “to standardise or not?” is always answered in The standard takes into account latest mar- the light of business interests, and not on the ket requirements in the industry. CTP has basis of purely technical considerations. become a norm across the globe; run lengths of plates have improved; quality of newsprint Since the mid-1990s, standardisation has improved tremendously; 40 and 42 gsm initiatives have been formed in a number newsprint are being used; Higher screen rul- of countries. WAN-IFRA (Then IFRA) ings and FM screens are common; Improved alone participated directly in such projects newsprint are being used to increase the in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the color gamut of newsprint. All these develop- 8 WORLD pRinteRs Forum ments are addressed in the standard.