How Color Management Strategies and Tools Can Strengthen Your Business

In a recent webinar, “Mastering Print Quality: How Color Management Strategies and Tools Can Empower Your Business,” PRINTING United Alliance senior editor Toni McQuilken spoke with Miguel Lazalde, color management consultant, Ricoh USA; and Haley Haar, owner and president of AlphaGraphics Kansas City, about empowering print businesses with color.

As high-quality color printing grows in demand, it’s no surprise that print service providers (PSPs) are seeing the service as an essential offering, rather than a nice-to-have. While achieving excellent color management can be daunting at first, the path is unique and achievable for operations of all sizes. The key is to find the right fit and knowing where to start.

Lazalde offers these three pieces of advice:

1. Know your environment – Are you implementing a new solution, or are you utilizing devices you already have? In some cases, the most cost-effective strategy may be to get training on equipment already provided in the shop. For others, it may be time to invest in new equipment.
2. Know your goals – What do you want to achieve with color management? Some PSPs may be looking to improve quality and meet customer needs, while others may be looking to reduce waste. Perhaps you want to become a G7-certified printer.
3. Take action – Talk to your vendors for help. Network with other providers to find out what they’ve done and what works. And lastly, find industry experts who are doing it right.

“You want to know where you're at, so that you're able to print jobs and know that they're not going to be rejected,” Lazalde notes. “You're either going to be proactive or reactive.”

For Haley Haar at AlphaGraphics Kansas City, taking a proactive approach to color management is something she and her team do well. In order to transition to a fully-digital workflow, mastering color consistency and management were extremely important.

“It goes back to that process that Miguel was referencing, it’s about getting the files in and getting them set up properly, so that when they got to the press, we knew that the files were set up in a way that we are going to get the most accurate color,” she notes. “We’re checking for spot colors, making sure our profile was set correctly – all those little tweaks were happening at the beginning.”

For PSPs looking to take a proactive stance on color management operations, it’s important to consider the following aspects:

• Software – Which profiling software will work best in your workflow?
• Hardware – Will you be using a spectrophotometer?
• Automation – Can automation be implemented to avoid the use of handheld devices, and offer ease-of-use for operators?

While an industry expert or partner can determine which setup will work best in a PSP’s specific environment, the most important place to get started is to look at how you currently manage files. Haar advises choosing a color profile to manage, and learning how your presses handle different colors.

When asked about the best advice for a PSP hesitant to invest in color management solutions, Lazalde notes, “Get started, do something. Because your competition is doing it.” He continues, “If you don’t satisfy that customer, someone else will. And you want that revenue, you want those partnerships.”

For those interested in learning more about color management, attend PRINTING United Expo. The 2025 event will be held Oct. 22-24 in Orlando, Florida, and registration is now open.