The company says beta tests of the new product have shown that Equinox marks a milestone in colour printing within graphic arts, including the commercial, digital and packaging sectors.
It claims Equinox combines colour and workflow technologies to create cost-effective control of high quality seven-colour process printing by employing colour-conversion technology for expanded gamut printing.
This enables the standardisation of five, six or seven inks of the user’s choice, “resulting in shorter make-ready times and less press waste.”
Equinox bases the technical aspects of colour conversion on standard ICC profiles but permits separate editorial control to allow the operator to choose how images should be separated and spot colours converted without compromising colour accuracy.
”The operator does not have to make decisions about colour matching or printing conditions as Equinox automatically retrieves that information from the ICC profile,” the company says.
However, users can alter an image-specific gamut and once that has been set-up it can be repeated for as many jobs as required using the automatic Equinox workflow component.
”When handling images users have the option of selective gamut expansion. With the Equinox Photoshop plug-in, for example, operators can choose to make grass greener, reduce the orange in flesh tones or add blue to a violet sweater but not a blue sky.
“With spot colours users can choose a colour build that maximises colour accuracy, or a colour build that maximises press stability and smoothness,” says Artwork Systems.
The Equinox technology includes algorithms to enable conversions of line art, vignettes and images.
