Harlequin Digital Hub debuts at Labelexpo Europe

Martin Bailey, CTO, Global Graphics Software during his presentation said, “Digital changes everything. We are taking about how it affects screening, colour management, trapping etc. However, much expertise one has in conventional technologies, it doesn't give them any mileage in the digital technology. Brand managers now insist on using same imagery across its campaigns to label to live imagery.”

The company claims that Harlequin Digital Hub has been developed to drive the industry’s inkjet presses and provides all the tools needed to produce consistent, predictable output.  “It ensures the accurate rendering of PDF files to meet brand managers’ expectations that they can use the same live transparency in label production as they do in commercial print, publication and wide format, and is compatible with Esko workflows. It comprises a range of technologies that can be customized to provide the optimum solution whatever the combination of colorants or media,” Bailey added.

The colour management solution also provides full support for industry standard ICC profiles, including DeviceLink and N-channel profiles, and fully supports hifi spaces such as CMYKOGV and spot colorants including white and varnish.

“ColourPro includes the ability to emulate a conventional press (or standard press characterisation) by using multiple ICC colour profiles to specify the colour behaviour of the digital press on which the labels are being printed, and that of the emulation target,” he explained.

“ColourPro includes look-up tables for Pantone colours so that a brand colour within the PDF or PostScript file can be transformed accurately, in a device independent way so it’s not necessary to develop new look-up tables for every different substrate. Additional tables can be created for custom brand colours. It’s also possible to configure ColourPro to emulate a conventional print process for all of the colours in the job except the brand colours, allowing colours that would have been printed using spot inks on a conventional press to take maximum advantage from the digital press gamut,” he said.

The HDS multi-level Screening (HDS-MLS) is used with inkjet heads that can apply different amounts of ink in each location (often known as grayscale heads or variable sized dots or VSD), because it can achieve the appearance of a much higher line screen than could be achieved with a binary screen for a given resolution, especially the lower resolutions associated with high speed inkjets.