How to subdue the Reflex Blue Blues

Reflex Blue (a.k.a. Red Shade Alkali Blue, Pigment Blue 61, Reflex Blue R 54/R 56) is one of the most commonly used spot colors - especially for corporate colors - and it is one of the most problematic inks to use on press.

Reflex Blue suffers from excessive marking, low scuff resistance, poor lightfastness and poor, very slow, drying qualities. It also has a bronzed look that causes it to shift color, from Blue to Purple when viewed at different angles.

And when mixed as part of another blue spot color, Reflex Blue effectively contaminates that ink color with its poor performance characteristics.

Reflex Blue Blues - slow drying

Printing inks are made primarily with resins, varnish, linseed oil, soybean oil, or a heavy petroleum distillate as the solvent (called the vehicle) combined with organic pigments. The resins and varnish control the tack and gloss of the ink while the solvents control press stability and fluidity. Drying oils control surface strength, drying time, and set, while the pigment acts as the coloring agent.

Although each ink pigment is unique, most have fairly uniform shapes and surface areas. Reflex Blue pigment on the other hand has jagged, irregular surfaces and shapes. To blend Reflex Blue ink, ink manufacturers must add surface active agents to the mix that allow proper wetting of the pigment. As a result, the ink retains a higher level of moisture than other ink formulations and therefore takes longer to dry.

Offset inks are generally designed to dry by two methods: absorption into the paper and evaporation from the surface. As the ink dries, the small, uniform color pigments settle close together and leave a flat ink film surface. However, when Reflex Blue pigments set they have a rough ink film surface. Although the ink may feel dry to the touch, just a light rub will break the surface and expose the wet pigment underneath. This results in unsightly scuff marks and color transfer (set-off) to surfaces that come into contact with it.

Reflex Blue Blues - color shift/burn out

Reflex blue  color-shift or "burnout" can occur when the printed ink film is over-coated with aqueous, or UV coating.  This affect results from a chemical reaction due to pH incompatibilities between the alkaline aqueous coating and certain alkaline sensitive ink pigments like Reflex Blue. The chemical reaction basically changes the way the color pigments reflect light. Individual press sheets pulled during the press run or top sheets in the pile are rarely as affected as the sheets within in the press loads. This indicates that heat and oxygen deprivation are contributing factors in accentuating and accelerating, the color-shift effect. Unfortunately the color-shift may not be apparent immediately off press and may take 24 hours or longer to be noticeable.

Tips for subduing the Reflex Blue Blues

1 Don't use it. If that's too drastic then:
If you are a printer, speak to your ink vendor. Most will stock an "imitation" Reflex Blue substitute. The most common is a Carbazole Violet & Phthalo Blue mix. Note that the imitation Reflex Blue may have a slightly different hue than the actual Reflex Blue so do a drawdown of the ink and get customer approval.

If you are a print buyer/specifier, speak to your print supplier about selecting an "imitation" Reflex Blue substitute. Get drawdowns of the ink and, once satisfied with the hue, document the ink manufacturer, ink series and name so that the same ink can be used for all your Reflex Blue needs.

2 Print the job using UV inks since they dry immediately.

3 Print small lifts. Shorter stacks of paper at the press deliver facilitate faster drying by allowing more air to circulate between sheets enabling gasses to escape. Shorter stacks will add a small amount of extra run time on press. Wind the printed loads as soon as possible to reduce unnecessary exposure to high heat builds captive in the pile.

4 If the shop runs a five day production schedule then print on Friday to allow the sheets to dry over the weekend before printing the second side or sending the presswork to the finishing/binding processes.

5 Consult with the printer/ink vendor to determine whether reformulating the Reflex Blue ink by adding drying agents. Note that doing so may increase cost and/or compromise the inks on press performance in other ways - e.g. it may adversely affect te quality of screen tint areas.

6 Apply a varnish, aqueous or UV coating to help seal the ink and eliminate scuffing, fingerprinting, and bronzing of larger ink areas. Use a low-amine or heat-resistant aqueous coating with as low a pH as possible (less alkaline). Inform your ink supplier of the need for alkali or fade resistant inks compatible with aqueous or UV coating and also consult with you coatings supplier and are assured of these pigments’ compatibility with their product. Confirm that the coating to be applied has been thoroughly tested prior to running the job.

7 Beware that UV coating, in particular, does not coat well over Reflex Blue and will sometimes fade or change the ink color. Pre-test Reflex Blue, especially tint solids and screens, by wet-trapping half the image with selected coating and then expose both samples to a high-heat source such as a heated saddle dryer. On-press testing is usually required to simulate actual production with ink and fountain solution. For side-by-side comparison, cut the coater blanket packing half-way through the printed ink film to be tested. Then expose the coated and uncoated print samples to a heated dryer saddle immediately off press. Burnout and color-shift will usually occur during heat application. If time permits, wait 24 hours, then reapply heat, and again compare the color integrity of the test samples. Test, test, test.

Other alkali sensitive pigments that can have similar issues to Reflex Blue include:
• Rhodamine Red - (Y.S. Rhodamine Red)
• Purple - (B.S. Rhodamine Red)• Warm Red - (Red Lake C)
• Violet - (Methyl Violet)
• 072 Blue
• Rubine Red - (Lithol Rubine)
• Fluorescent inks

Standardize your print process

A standardized print manufacturing process is critical for achieving effective press to proof color alignment, short press makereadies, and minimal wastage of time and materials.


The five basic steps are:

1. Choose the appropriate standard and/or specification target for the presswork.
Management's responsibility (with input from prepress, press room, and sales) is to establish what the targets and tolerances (dot gains, standards, specifications etc.) are for the presswork - because those are marketing/business decisions. Then management must provide the tools to allow prepress and pressroom to achieve those targets. That target then drives the complete print production process and determines the selection of all of the components (proofs, press calibration, inks, paper, etc.) needed to hit the target. Worldwide the most adopted standard for printing is ISO 12647-x. The various ISO 12647 standards provide specifications for data, proofs, inks, paper and press calibration. In North America GRACoL and SWOP specifications are largely based on ISO 12647-2 and ISO 12647-3 respectively.


2. Clearly communicate with print customers about requirements for data/file submission.
This includes items such as whether files should adhere to industry specifications such as SNAP or face rejection. It may include items such as whether native application files are acceptable or only PDFs, what resolution and color mode that images need to be, what minimum text size is acceptable, etc., etc.

3. Implementation of standardized proofing.
In-house proofing must be set up to the same standard and/or specification target for the presswork (i.e. ISO 12647-x, SWOP, etc.). If print customers will be providing proofs for the pressroom then the printer has to communicate that customer-submitted proofs must adhere to the appropriate standard. All proofs must include a color control strip so that they can be verified for conformance to the target standard/specification. There should be virtually no difference in appearance between a customer-supplied proof and one done by the printer in-house. It should also be made clear that the printer's in-house proof is the final proof.

4. Optimize prepress.
The responsibility of prepress is to align proofing to the target established by management as well as to maintain proofing within the tolerances established by management. Prepress must also output plates that enable the press operators to align their presswork to the proofs with the press performing in a repeatable, stable condition. Prepress should have well defined procedures for ensuring that platemaking and the resulting plates are consistent and within tolerance.

5. Optimize press performance.
The responsibility of the press operator(s) is to manage the press in such a way that the the films of the appropriate inks (as defined by the chosen specifications) are laid down in a manner that meets the targets and tolerances (hue, trapping, etc.) established by management and that the halftone dots on the plate are reproduced with fidelity on the various substrates (slur, doubling, etc.). Also, the press operator needs to make sure that all press-related consumables (fountain solution, inks, etc.) are within the tolerances needed to achieve the management defined targets for pressroom output.

U.S. Postal Service uses wrong art - printer gets the blame

Why is it that the printer is always blamed when there's an artwork mistake?

Recently the U.S. Postal Service released this new 44 cent stamp:
honoring Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty. The U.S. Postal Service issued a press release about the new stamp stating: "The statue, located on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, was designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi."

Unfortunately, that is not the statue featured on the stamp. Instead it is a half size replica located in front of he New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas Nevada.
Liberty lighting the way in Las Vegas.
The original on the left and the replica 2,600 miles away in Las Vegas.
The original press release (now updated) makes no mention of the statue shown on the stamp being the Las Vegas replica rather than the New York original.

Unfortunately Time magazine referred to the Post Office error in these words: "Even the Post Office didn't pick up on the printing error" and "perhaps the original message of the stamp has been lost in the misprint" (Click HERE for the full Time magazine story).

It seems that the printer always gets the blame when things go wrong.

TRONitized - the influence of TRON on graphic art (well mine anyway)

In 1982 Disney released the seminal movie TRON, a film which wasn't a large commercial success but did become a cult favorite.It was a very different world back then. Mobile phones were the size of briefcases and very few people had access to a "real" computer but settled instead for machines like the Commodore VIC-20 and the Atari 400/800. If you didn't know what a spreadsheet or word processor was, then at least you play video games on the device.

TRON was the first film to really expose people to the potential of computer graphics and at the time had a big impact on my graphic design and illustration work.State of the art computer graphics when TRON was released.
What impressed most people about TRON were the glow effects. That is what they thought were the computer effects. But in reality the glow effects were done with old-fashioned non-digital methods which I was able to recreate in my basement photo studio.Recreating the TRON glow: from left bottom layer to right top layer: lith film negative, 1/4" thick frosted glass, colored acetate gel, lith film positive.
Photographing all the layers in register from directly overhead using an old vegetable crate turned into a lightbox created the glow "computer graphic" effect.
If needed, a second exposure (with a lith film mask) using a special lens filter (sometimes homemade using nylon stockings) would add a little sparkle.
It was a vary tedious process as I first had to plan then create the artwork. I used 2 1/4" x 2 3/4" film in a special holder on my 4"x5" view camera. Each image required several exposures depending on the complexity of the final effect. There was no way to preview how the final image would look, so the exposed film would be taken for processing late at night so that it would be ready for viewing the next morning. If anything was wrong, any small error in registration, or exposure, or a spec of dust in the image meant that it would have to be reshot.

Despite the complexity of the process, my illustration style based on this technique:
Was used for corporate brochures:
As well as the early promotions for Vancouver's 1986 World's Fair:
And product brochures:
Magazine covers:
And various editorial illustration applications:
Universally, art directors thought that I was a real wizard of computer graphics and was able to give them the high-tech look they were after - even though, secretly, all I used was hand drawn art mixed in with some old-school photographic film trickery.

TRON: Legacy will be released to theaters December 17, 2010.

Eliminating show-through in scans and/or photocopies

Paper is a fairly translucent substrate. The thinner/lighter weight or higher quality the paper the more translucent it is. The result is "show-through" - seeing a ghost image of what was printed on the reverse side - whether reading the page itself or scanning/photocopying it.
Scan with color bar and text on the next page showing-through.Close up view of show-through.
To eliminate show-through in scans and/or photocopies, simply place a piece of black paper behind the sheet that you are scanning. This evens out the tonality of the page and effectively eliminates show-through.

Optimizing images in 8 easy steps - the real basic basics

Who this post is for
Designers and people who supply images to printers and want to provide the best image possible without a lot of technical complication. Also, printers who receive poor quality images who want to help their customers tweak images to get a better result.

The software
I'm using PhotoShop CS3, but any image editing software that is capable of doing these basic manipulations will work.

The image
I'll be using this image:because it has, I hope you can see, some obvious color problems. The image is from the daughter of make-up man Harry Buchman who worked on the movie "Jaws."

The 8 basic steps
There are many ways and tools that achieve the same or similar results - most are very simple, but like anything they can be made more complicated. This following is a basic, pragmatic, method to getting better images for reproduction.

These are the 8 steps:
1) Check the computer monitor display to make sure that it is representing the tone scale correctly.
2) Check the computer monitor display to make sure that it is representing neutrals correctly.
3) Check the image resolution.
4) Set the color target.
5) Adjust color
- with an "auto-correction".
- with a manual correction.
6) Set Black and white points.
7) Adjust contrast.
8) Sharpen image and save (under a new name).

Step One - the tone scale
Download this graphic and open it in your image editing application:You should see a 21 step ramp going from 0% on the left to 100% black on the right. The black should look black and the white look white. You should be able to distinguish every patch of grey separate from each other however it is acceptable if the last two patches (95% and 100%) blend together.

Step Two - neutrality
The patches of grey in the graphic should all look neutral.

If your display passes #1 and #2 then you're good to go. If not, you may need more sophisticated help.

Step Three - image resolution
Check the image resolution. Typically the image size is based on a resolution of 72 pixels per inch (a.k.a. 72 dpi):This image is sized at 8.333" x 5.625" at 72 pixels per inch. 72 pixels per inch is pretty standard for web pages. For printing, a higher resolution is required. Changing the resolution of this image to 300 pixels per inch with "resample" not selected: shows that this image is only suitable to be reproduced in print at a size of 2" x 1.35". An image resolution of 300 pixels per inch (a.k.a. 300 dpi) at 100% reproduction size is quite standard for print application.

Step Four - set the color target
This tells the image editing application what the intent, or final destination, of the image is and helps it to display the image correctly. The color target is embodied in a color profile.
The two most common color profiles used are:
1) sRGB - which is used for images destined for the web or printed on desktop inkjet and photofinishing printers.
2) Adobe 1998 - which is used for images destined for print reproduction.By default, most digital cameras embed the sRGB profile. It can be reassigned to the Adobe 1998 profile if the destination is a printing press.

Step Five - adjust color
Auto-correction
Many image editing applications have an auto-correction capability:Sometimes that will give an acceptable result or one that can be a base for further work:Auto-correction tends to work best with images that contain a great variety of colors.

OR

Manual-correction
Manual color correction takes four steps:
1) identify neutrals
2) neutralize mid-tones
3) neutralize shadow-tones
4) neutralize highlight-tones

This image contains several likely neutrals:The highlights on the water, the midtones of the beret, the shadow-tones in the darkest part of the vest.

Use the eyedropper tool to measure the RGB values of the mid tones in the beret:The eyedropper indicates that the RGB values in this part of the image is:
R 131
G 71
B 60

The large number for RGB relative to the G and B values indicates that the image has a red cast (too much red). To be neutral grey the RGB values should be similar. By adjusting the RGB color values so that they are similar makes the mid-tones represented by this area of the image neutral:It's not important that the RGB values are absolutely identical - close enough is good enough.
In this case the final RGB values are:
R 81
G 87
B 85
Note that the color adjustment is balanced in that Red is lowered while Green and Blue are increased.

Repeat the color adjustment, using the same procedure for the highlights and the shadows.

The result:
Step Six - adjust black and white points
Use the "eye dropper" tool in concert with the "Show Info" dialog box to get the RGB values of the specular highlights. Highlights that should be absolutely white with no detail:Pure, no detail white should have RGB values of 255 each. This image's values are:
R 242
G 235
B 235
Which means that although they may appear white - the highlights are actually grey. Adjusting the highlights using the "level adjustment" option sets the highlights to their appropriate values:The same thing would then be done to the darkest black in the image which should be close to:
R 0
G 0
B 0

The result:
Step Seven - adjust contrast
Adjusting contrast changes the relationship of the tones of the image making it appear "harsher" or "softer. The "Curves" menu option is used to alter contrast:
Step Eight - sharpen image and save (under a new name)
The final steps are to "sharpen" the image (of which there are many different methods):In general, images destined for the web should be sharpened enough so that they look "natural". Images destined for print should appear slightly over-sharpened, a bit harsh looking because halftoning has a bit of a softening effect on images.

So, following these "simple" 8 steps, here's where we started:And here's where we ended:
Obviously more work could be done on the image. Other, more sophisticated, methods could be used. However following these simple 8 steps should provide much better results for those people who don't want to get too technically involved.

JPEG images for print production - the facts

Saving an image file in the JPEG format is a commonly used method of "lossy" compression for digital photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing for a user selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. The greater the image compression the smaller the resulting image file and the greater the loss of image quality.

By default, images are JPEG compressed when saved as a PDF file.

How JPEG compression works

JPEG compression works by chunking similar image pixels that have slightly different color values into groups of pixels with the same color value.
The above original image file size is 1.5 MB.
The same image file saved at highest compression/lowest quality is only 92 KB. (Note: this level of extreme image compression would never be used in production work.)
Subtracting the pixels of the original image from the JPEG image reveals where pixels are different. Note that large areas of no detail like the sky have been chunked into large pixel groupings while areas of fine detail have been chunked into smaller pixel groupings.
The resolution of the original image impacts the effect of JPEG image compression

On the left is the original high resolution image. On the right is the JPEG version. Note that the JPEG artifacts are barely visible.
On the left is an original medium resolution image. On the right is the JPEG version. Note that the JPEG artifacts have become visible.
On the left is an original low resolution image. On the right is the JPEG version. Note that the JPEG artifacts are now very visible.

Bottom line - high resolution images can tolerate a greater degree of compression than low resolution images.

Resaving images, even edited images, in JPEG format does NOT reduce quality further

The original image saved at highest compression/least quality to exaggerate the effects of JPEG compression.
The same image resaved 15 times at the highest compression/least quality. The image was altered before each save to force recompression.
Subtracting the pixels of the original image from the 15th version of the resaved JPEG image reveals where pixels are different. Note that only the areas where the image was altered are different despite being resaved 15 times with high compression/low quality. All other pixels are the same.

Resaving images that have been cropped DOES reduce quality further

On the left is the original image saved with high compression/low quality. On the right is the same image that has been cropped and resaved with the same high compression/low quality setting. Cropping the image causes the chunking of pixels during compression to be redone and introduces artifacts.
Subtracting the pixels of the original image from the cropped version of the resaved JPEG image reveals where pixels are different.

Bottom line - multiple resaves of images with JPEG compression has no effect on pixels (image detail) that have not been edited. Pixels that have been edited will be "chunked" to the same degree as the pixels in the original image. In other words, images do not degrade after multiple resaves using JPEG compression.

The most common level of compression used does NOT result in any visible image degradation.

Click images to enlarge
Original image at left - high quality/low compression on right (Photoshop level 12)
Original image at left - high quality/low compression on right (Photoshop level 10 - the most common level of JPEG compression)
Original image at left - medium quality/medium compression on right (Photoshop level 8)
Original image at left - medium quality/high compression on right. (Photoshop level 6)
Subtle image degradation is becoming visible.
Original image at left - low quality/high compression on right. (Photoshop level 4)
Image degradation is becoming visible.
Original image at left - very low quality/very high compression on right. (Photoshop level 2)
Image degradation is clearly visible.
Original image at left - extremely low quality/extremely high compression on right. (Photoshop level 0)
Image degradation is obvious
Bottom line - at typical JPEG compression levels there is no visible degradation of the original image. In fact, one has to go to unusual levels of compression before artifacts are seen (at least level 8 in Adobe Photoshop).
Images with lots of small detail compress less and mask JPEG artifacts better than images with large smooth tone areas.

Double bottom line - there is no reason to be concerned about saving images in JPEG format so long as the highest quality/least amount of compression option is selected.

Special blog production note.

Unless otherwise stated, all "Original" images were low resolution images. JPEG compression was "0" (lowest quality/highest compression). It was the only way to exaggerate the difference enough to demonstrate the issues. If I had used the actual original images - 14 megapixels in this case - the differences would mostly have been invisible. Note that the Blogger website compresses the images that I upload so there will be compression artifacts in the posted "Original" images that were not in the images that I uploaded.

I strongly encourage you to repeat any of these tests yourself with your own images to confirm, or contradict, my findings.

I'm not suggesting that you use JPEG as your preferred image file type. My intent is only to show how saving an image in the JPEG file format introduces, or does not introduce, artifacts and hopefully shed a light on some commonly held beliefs about this image file format.