Case Study

Schofeld Agency – PRESS MATCHER

The Compliance with Industry Standards, the Ease of Use, the Flexibility, and the Excellent Color Accuracy is What Makes CGS ORIS PRESS MATCHER Stand Out from the Rest

Schofeld, located in an old mansion in Bremen in northern Germany, was founded 13 years ago by two brothers, John and Gil Schofeld, as a creative and brand design agency with a focus on producing print-ready data. SCHOFELD is among the smaller agencies, but has acquired an excellent reputation with prestigious clients such as J.J. Darboven Coffee and Appel delicatessen, and companies like American Express and Deutsche Bank. “Our clients particularly appreciate our knowledge how creative designs can technically be realized in practice. In most cases, we deliver print-ready files which require no further editing at the printer”, says John Schofeld. “This saves the customer a lot of time and minimizes errors.” Every one of our ten employees has a creative and a pre-media background. We are, however, not a prepress company in the classical sense, but cooperate closely with repro studios and printers.”

An IRIS proofing system was used for several years, but finally could not satisfy the expectations and varied requirements of their customers. “We are not only producing proofs, but we also, for example, print package dummies for customers overnight to be used on exhibitions or for product presentations”, explains Gil Schofeld. Once the IRIS had been put out of service, all jobs were proofed externally, with the resulting time delays. Today, only a few packaging proofs, involving metallic or white colors, are still produced outside. About six months ago, SCHOFELD invested in a Xerox DocuColor 252 to be able to produce color-accurate prints in-house again, and was immediately satisfied with its comparatively large color gamut and outstanding stability. However, SCHOFELD wanted to go one step further and produce certifiable contract-quality proofs. Xerox Partner Comkopie X, which has excellent know-how in prepress and printing for many years, introduced CGS ORIS PRESS MATCHER, one of the first systems to gain FOGRA certification based on the ‘Validation Printing System’ criteria. After thorough tests, a quick decision was made to purchase the software, as well as CGS ORIS CERTIFIED to certify the printed proofs, along with the necessary measuring hardware.

“Outstanding proof quality, simple and fast operation, and the flexibility of this solution perfectly suit our requirements.”

Gil Schofeld.

“Electro-photographic systems are more sensitive than inkjet printers so the machine is installed in a separate air-conditioned and ventilated area to keep variations to a minimum”, explains John Schofeld. “Since the machine is primarily used as a proofing system, we check almost every print immediately with CERTIFIED and put a control label on it. In most cases prints are based on formal offset standards like ISOcoated V2 (Fogra39), which can be achieved without any difficulty thanks to PRESS MATCHER. For us it is most important that the system can be quickly re-calibrated to these standards at any time. For this, we have installed a central measuring station with an X-Rite Eye-One and the I/O table so that every staff member can do a calibration. With the software wizard this is easy and does not require any expertise”. An ECI 2002 target is used and is measured on the I/O table in about four minutes. In case the print is not within the ISO tolerances after measurement, the result can be corrected by outputting and calculating it again. SCHOFELD uses the more rigorous criteria of the FograCert contract proof standard, defined in ISO 12647-7, as opposed to the ones based on the ‘Validation Print Creation’. Even so, proofs are within this more exacting tolerance after 2-3 iterations (measuring cycles) for proofing, an optical brightener-free paper, PearlDIGITAL 170 from CGS, is used. This has a coloration close to the ISOcoated V2 norm so that a paper tint simulation is not necessary. Alternatively, glossy papers or adhesive materials are used for specific applications like package dummies, all to within common industry standards.

Equally important is the ability of the software to print special colors as accurately as possible. PRESS MATCHER contains all common spot color sets including HKS and Pantone. A gamut viewer shows at a glance whether the printer gamut is large enough to print a specific color accurately, or which variances must be expected. The ability to proof DCS2 data, still required because of spot colors, directly without any further conversion, is also an important feature of the software, as are. many other features like pre-flight or normalizing. After PRESS MATCHER had been installed, SCHOFELD immediately sought the ‘FograCert Validation Print Creation’ certification. Although their prints are, strictly speaking, design proofs, there is a high level of acceptance amongst the most demanding customers for this validation standard. For SCHOFELD it is not so much a question of saving cost but the ability to provide the customer each time with proofs, even for large jobs, that meet a given standard. In that regard, the investment in additional software and hardware has already paid off.

Related Products:
icon-PRESS MATCHER icon-CERTIFIED EVALUATE icon-COLOR TUNER
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