FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 4, 2006

SGIA ’06 Instructor Bruce Ridge Speeds Up Color Monitor Trend

Ridge pushes digital imagers to learn how to measure color output’s quality

Fairfax, Virginia — Bruce Ridge plans to do more than educate when he talks about color monitoring at SGIA ’06 (Las Vegas, September 26­29); he wants to build momentum for a shift he sees on the horizon for the digital imaging industry.

“One of the real twists is that color monitoring is not being used by most digital printers at all. But I’d be willing to bet this practice will become common in the digital market in the next two to three years,” he said.

Ridge, Business Director for Nazdar Consulting Services (Terrace Shawnee, Kansas) and Member of SGIA’s Academy of Screen Printing Technology, has spent more than 11 years working on color control processes for screen print and digital operations.

His session, “Printing Consistent Process Color: How and What to Monitor in Color Production” (Wednesday, September 27, 3:00 pm to 3:50 pm), will review color measurement and monitoring methods, giving a detailed explanation for measuring points known as “color bars.”

In addition to helping digital printers, the course also is designed for screen printers who print four-color or single-color half tones. “In overall color adjusting or evaluating, there is not a big difference” among screen printers and digital imagers, Ridge said.

In the end, printers must pick out color bars that will apply to their technology processes and create a customized control bar, which is made up of several color bars. “The biggest [mistake] I see is that people use control bars that aren’t necessarily appropriate for them because they don’t know how to customize color bars for their own process,” Ridge said.

Ridge plans to hand out control bar examples during the presentation so that attendees will have a reference point as they set up their color monitoring procedures at their businesses.

Visit the Session Planner at the SGIA ’06 Web site for more information. Then register for the workshop.

SGIA — Supporting the Leaders of the Digital & Screen Printing Community
“Specialty imaging” comprises digital imaging, screen printing and the many other imaging technologies SGIA members use, including those they’ll tap in the future. These are the imaging processes and technologies employed to create new products and to enhance existing products including point-of-purchase displays, signs, advertisements, garments, containers, and vehicles. To make the most of your specialty imaging business, take full advantage of the information on SGIA.org, and experience the specialty graphic imaging industry first-hand at SGIA ’06 (Las Vegas Convention Center, September 26­29, 2006).

SGIA
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Phone: 703.385.1335
E-Mail: mhiggins@sgia.org
Website URL: www.sgia.org