Idealliance is a well-known international organization and the founder of G7. In previous INKISH films, we have shared information about the G7 organization led by Tim Baechle. In this quite exciting interview with Mr. Selvan from Pressman (who represents Idealliance in India), we get an insight into some of the challenges with color-management in India. Color-Management is not only interesting for the brand-owners, but also for the printing companies Selvan explains – and even with more than a 1.000 programs in place in India – still, 249.000 is remaining.

Visiting India, and looking at the quality of print – the delta E’s are quite big, to say it mildly, but no question that the work Pressman/Idealliance does is excellent, valuable, and well-received!

Idealliance is a team of experts in U.S. it’s in U.S. based, who work in the right from research still implementation of a standard. They work very closely work with ISO committee in developing a standard, and approving it. They also have programs which also creates an awareness and it helps the buyers, it helps the printers, it helps everybody in the complete cycle whose in the print cycle.

In India, any printer you’d pick they have a 100 jobs running in 100 standards, and this is a world of standardization. When brands want the same job printed anywhere in the world to look same, when we talk about sanitization and the way we work in India, it’s a moving entirely different against the standards. So it’s in the, there is a specific requirement from the brand in managing getting the same color across the globe. Our job is to reach printers, we go to the different country, go to the printer and explain them what a standard, how it has to be done and what are the important of standardization, visits helping or visits helping the brand in terms of standardization, how it will help for a printer as a process control.

No it’s not not just for the brand owners. Every printer, two things are very, very important, one is print quality and second is consistency. Print quality comes only if they know what to print and consistency becomes only when they repeat whatever they do and this too is possible only when they know what to do and this G7 specifications or an ISO specifications, whatever’s there and as a standard we’ll help printer to know what to print and how to repeat it every time. So it really helps as a process control.

The concept is very similar in India. If the print buyers are not happy with the results usually here that they then see who designs a job, they see the color in the monitor, they have a calibrated monitor and they expect the printer to deliver a similar result. If the colors are not matching, there is a possibility that design agency may reject the job and this is going to waste a lot of time as well as middle and money on the process. Many brand owners, many packaging companies started expecting what they want.

Earlier, they don’t know, they just designed that they wanted to get delivery but now brands and ad agencies are very particular in what they want and printers are not able to deliver it efficiently so now they’re coming into the process of understanding what to deliver, how to deliver and this is where [inaudible 00:03:04] comes into the picture that we worked very closely with the printer in creating an awareness, educating them, showing them how to do and putting a system so they can do it daily basis and we are also helping with the brand owners what we expect from the printer, how to communicate with the printer and how they should communicate with each other.

There are a lot of printers who have with some brands who are, who may require a different specification and we are always at reason and there are lot of printers who want to improve by themselves. Not for a brand or a customer, just for our self improvement. Even for them, we are there and in last 4 months we have a out are more than 10 printers who are booked. There inquiry for a qualification process.

Yes. When we talk about old machines, the problem here is the roller settings are the roller condition is not good. Which is going to affect the calibration process and in India, maintenance is still a dream that is going to happen every day, it’s never happens. These are the areas that a printer has to do little change.

A Pressman has three word… One is Pressman Academy we do onsite training programs, workshops for the operators the main purpose is to educate them. That is the most important thing because most of the people who work in printing industry are not a qualified printing technologist. They all school dropouts, they never… did this accidentally came into printing industry and our job is to give them a platform to learn printing technology. This is what we are doing and under academy we do press calibrations till now we were doing ISO now we started working on G7. We started upgrading all the customers into G7 methodology and under academy we have a WhatsApp group which is called Pressman PQM there are more than 1200 printers. Connected 1200 printers in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. We have seven lots of groups and this group is only for question and answers.

Anybody from this area they can post a question Pressman is there to give them answer. Connected 1200 printers and this is the largest community for this South Asian region only for helping each other for the learning and learning, learning and sharing knowledge. Under the Pressman solutions we are a dealer or partner for a couple of software companies, property press we are associated with Kodak and Piccolo and for the press code we are a partner for Print Flow, Bodoni and for pre press we also do color management we are with the CGS offering a flex pack or is currently and Otis press manager, and we have a lot of quality control tools like the digital leap indicator to do the roller settings. Then gloss meter spectrum photography for the MED pay. Then we also have a small kit, all the Pressmen kit. It’s not our product just for an awareness, we are selling responsible quality control tools, which is required for a press group.

Yes. Not just for that. Right from understanding what you want till auditing and to ensure the system is followed, not implemented, followed by the operators on a regular basis tell that area and we are offering them a service.