One of the hottest topics in our industry today is ink savings software. It’s interesting that this topic is getting so much attention but the methodology used to save ink, gray component replacement, has been around for many years.

GCR is a separation technique that replaces a color’s complementary color (i.e. the yellow in blue) with black. It also replaces grays made with three colors, with black. GCR has long been favored in the newspaper industry for many reasons:

•GCR or a heavy black means less cyan, magenta and yellow ink on the sheet.

•Less ink means less water and reduced setoff.

•Less ink and water could equal better runnability.

•A strong black means sharper images and detail.

Until recently, the only place to control whether or not your images or pages had GCR applied was in Adobe Photoshop using an ICC profile that you knew had been created with a strong black. Now, all of this has changed. Thanks to color management, device-link profiles and some very smart color scientists, many vendors now offer the ability to re-separate incoming material using a strong black. And the amazing part is that the material that is reseparated often looks identical to the original (see Figure 1).



Fig. 1: A PDF of an original ad, and the same PDF (below) with ink savings applied.

Where to start

If you want to start testing some ink savings software, here are a few recommendations.

Test multiple software solutions. OneVision, Agfa and GMG are just a few that have products in the newspaper marketplace.

Start off testing multiple files on your calibrated, color-managed proofing device. Try to pick some ads/pages that may be difficult to reproduce. Include ads with different color groupings and different levels of GCR (you can easily check the separations on your PDFs by going to Advanced/Print Production/Output Preview). Run the files inline (original versus ink savings file) on your proofer and look for visual differences.

If you’re happy with what you see at the proofer then start to analyze digital RIP data. Take an original section (without ink savings applied) and then re-run all the files through the RIP after ink savings has been applied. You should be able to take this data and chart it out in an app such as Microsoft Excel. This data should give you a good idea of what the potential savings could be.

If the presets check out then go up on press with some sample files. Make sure to run the samples inline — original files versus ink savings files. Run the test to solid ink densities and then look for visual differences between the files.

If you own a spectrophotometer and you have some time on your hands, you can always run two targets inline as well. One target would be the original and one target would have been processed through the ink savings software.

Compare the DeltaE between those two targets to verify and validate how well the software is performing. An average DeltaE of less than 2 will never be noticed by your customers. It’s also a nice way to sell your internal customers on the merits of using the software.

I have some friends who ran the tests on press and weighed ink canisters to accurately determine how much less ink was used.

This is also good methodology to determine savings.

Not without risks

The software doesn’t come without risks. One vendor requires PDF input, which could mean you have to distill PostScript on deadline just to achieve ink savings. If the software changes the integrity of the originally supplied material, it is not acceptable.

Some vendors are throwing around very large numbers on the amount of savings that you’ll realize. Be skeptical about numbers that start out at 15 percent or 20 percent.

Be cautious for several reasons: Do you really know how many of your digital ads currently contain a light, medium or heavy black? Do you use graybars in your pressroom or are you running to proofs? If you run to proofs, do you really know how much ink you’re putting on the sheet?

And the pressroom really has to watch the black ink density because the latitude on your press just got smaller. If the black ink density is too low the page could appear washed out. If the black density is too high the page could turn to mud.

The bottom line is that all of the ink optimization software available does work. But make sure you test them properly to make sure they deliver what you want. Optimizing your ink consumption is just good practice and it’s something we all should have been controlling for years.