ECI meeting 2007-06-15

• Stuttgart Media University
• June 15, 2007

• Michael Adloff
• Maren Schmidt
• Klaus-Hermann Otto
• Olaf Drümmer
• Florian Süßl
• Ronald Schaul
• Rainer Schoeppy
• Roland Bühler
• Günter Bestmann
• Darrian Young
• Renate Rewer
• Jan-Willem Rossée
• Jörg Schober
• Ulrike Cremer
• Bernhard Schmidt
• Bernd Adam (steps in for Karl Michael Meinecke)
• George Battrick
• Liane May
• Stephan Jaeggi
• Karl Koch
• Dietmar Wüller
• Hanno Hoffstadt
• Claudio Wilmanns (Höcker)
• Henrik Schmidt

• Karsten Ackmann
• Sascha Bugai
• André Schützenhofer
• Urs Schaub
• Peter Kleinheider
• Oliver Böhm

The meeting was called to order at 9:00 am by Olaf Drümmer, Chairman.

Following self-introductions, Olaf Drümmer reviewed the agenda for the meeting.

RESOLVED to accept the agenda.

Olaf Drümmer reported that the minutes of the October 26-27, 2006 Berlin meeting had been distributed electronically after that meeting.

There being no comments or corrections, a motion was made, seconded and unanimously

RESOLVED, to accept the minutes of the October 2006 meeting as distributed.

Mr Drümmer suggested that the next meeting would be Feb 14/15 2008 saying that place was not defined yet.

Elie Khoury suggested that this meeting could be hosted by Alwan Color Expertise in Lyon.

All members seemed to agree with the proposal. E. Khoury asked for a delay to confirm his company invitation, probably by mid-July.

Mr Drümmer remind the members that ISO secretary considered usage of ISO name in ECI profile names was an infringement to their trade mark copyright.

A general consensus was achieved that we need to change ECI profiles names

A disucssion followed about what would be the new name given the current adoption and recognition of old names. Arguments were brought for and against replacement of ISO with ECI or PSO words. A general consensus seemed to be reached for PSO.

A motion was made, The vote was 21 in favor, 2 negatives and 1 abstention.

RESOLVED, to replace ISO by PSO in ECI profile names.

Mr Drümmer reminded the assembly of the importance and the need for software vendors and users to adopt version 4 of ICC profile.

Software should support v2.2 and v2.4 profiles.

Mr Drümmer suggested that ECI should state that minor versions of ICC profiles are also compatible with PDF/X as this seems to be an area of ambiguity on the market. The same applies to v4.1 and v4.2 profiles for PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5

A motion was made and unanimously

RESOLVED, to communicate ECI position about ICC profiles compatibility with PDF/X.

Ulrike Cremer represents IFRA in this meeting. She is in charge of training at IFRA and contributed to the R&D of IFRA ICC Profiles.

Miss Cremer presented IFRA works regarding ISOnewspaper profile adoption worldwide.

She said that the profile with 26% DG was fairly adopted worldwide except in the US where newspaper printers believed that their dot gain with negative plates was closer to 30%. She noted that a recent survey showed that average dot gain of a newspaper press in the US was actually around 26%.

The USA seem to agree now to use 26% DG profile and charcterisation data.

Miss Cremer said that IFRA is considering editing ISOnewspaper profile to a lower GCR version which is believed to be more appropriate for color management and repurposing on the printing side. She believes that IFRA will most probably agree to rename newspaper profile according to ECI resolution.

Nevertheless, since IFRA Color Quality club contest is running currently, profile name change will probably have to wait till the end of the year with a simultaneous update to IFRA's profile name and GCR adjustment.

Carlo Balestrini represents TAG Italia in this meeting.

He presented his company (ICS) color management activities.

Mr Balestrini contributes to the promotion of ISO standard and Fogra characterization data in Italy.

Mr Balestrini's presented a snapshot of the italian graphic arts market today:

• RGB workflows are not used
• as a GWG member, TAGA promotes and recommends PDF/X usage.
• PDF represents 70-80% of exchanged files with a trend in favor of PDF/X usage
• Interest of industry for ISO standards is increasing in Italy.
• Digital proofing is now quite standardized and is based on “ECI profiles”. Ad agencies and repro houses have neen a driving force in this direction.
• TAGA is a technical committee and a reference for the Italian market. 2 to 3 working groups are dedicated to experimentation and guidelines publishing in different areas of the

graphic industries: Digital printing etc…

• New subjects are being added to the TAGA WG works : Softproof and converting (paper)
• TAGA work in cooperation with other italian R&D organizations
• One objective is to revice INI, the Italian organisation for standardization, membership and contribution to ISO TC 130.
• TAGA Cooperates with GWG, CIP4, Intergraph, and would like to attend ECI meetings as an liaison member
• TAGA is organising a color management day between 16-18 october
• Test and evaluation systems (proofing, repurposing, softproofing, profiling, viewing, measuring) will be presented during this event
• TAGA will publish new documents about its activities soon.

Mr Elie Khoury asked for a clarification of TAGA's status within ECI.

Mr Drümmer explained that ECI members are industry experts and not companies or organization, but some influent and interesting organizations like IFRA, Ugra… can apply for and become liaison members.

Mr Drümmer then welcomed TAGA Italia as a liaison member.

Mr Olaf Drümmer informed ECI members of the following progression and status of ISO TC 130 WG2 works:

• PDF/X-4 and PDF/X-5 standards were approved with minor editorial changes left. They should be published by autumn 2007.
• PDF/X4 is based on PDF 1.7 allowing transparencies, optional content (layers), 16 bits images, JPEG2000 images etc…
• PDF/X-4p 'p' stands for profile which means that PDF/X-4p references the output intent profile
• PDF/X-5 is like PDF/X-2 which means that reference contents are allowed, n channel profiles too

Various improvements and clarifications about CMYK to CMYK transformations have also been addressed and mentionned by Mr Drümmer. Transparencies has been addressed too as they are more and more used in nowadays workflows.

Heidelberg presentation of TVI curves analysis conducted by Dr Gunter Bestman.

This analysis made from 71 different print data set demonstrates that average print ISO curves are still valid.

Dr Bestman also described briefly TC 130 discussions including profile copyright, new SCIID images, paper categorization, ISO 12647-7 proofing standard, measurement issues, plate for offset printing.

Erwin Widmer added 2 precisions on descussed issues during Bangkok meeting, Japanese delegation objective of adding low quality printers standard (design proof) to 12647-7 as well as 12646 standard approval.

Dr Bestmann commented WG3 meetings and mainly the american request to update ISO-12647 dot gain curves to take into account “CTP impact” on press natural dot gain and also try to assess the possibility of having less curves than the current 6 standard curves (A,B,C,D,E,F).

Dr Bestmann presented a survey that was conducted by Heidelberg on more than 50 print jobs done by their clients.

Statistical analysis and averaging of the collected data seemed to confirm the pertinence of the current ISO-12647 A and B curves in terms of curve shape and values.

Another major issue that was raised in Bangkok meeting was ISO 12647-7.

Japanese delegation would like to iintroduce a new proofing standard called “Certified Design Proof” which corresponds to laser printers capabilities.

A long debate concluded on the following options:

• Option 1: complete the standard as-is to include ‘Halftone Proof’ and ‘Design Proof’ requirements as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS).
• Option 2: create a new document based on input from Japan that can be submitted as a revision to the standard in the form of a Draft International Standard (DIS).

A technical specification describing the 3 possible methods of “calibrating” a press:

• TVI (Tonal Value Increase) which is the current ISO-12647-2 method
• NPDC (neutral print Density Curves) according to GRACol7
• ICC DeviceLink Profiles method

should be presented as a draft document in Tokyo

Bernhard Schmidt - PRINOVIS

Mr Schmidt said that he organized a meeting and collected users feedback regarding PSR profiles.

He also reminded the assembly that lwc, sc and MF paper reprints is envisaged.

Elie Khoury stressed the importance of having better documentation regarding Reference printing conditions of published ECI Profiles.

Mr. Drümmer agreed and confirmed that there will be a documentation regarding ECI gravure profiles that will be released by the end of the year.

Mr Suessl mentioned that metric and visual evaluations are currently done on the achieved prints.

Mr Suessl indicated that the group is envisaging having 2 characterisation data sets shortly, one corresponding to favourable prints only and another one including unfavourable prints.

Interrogated about the delay in publishing MFC data and profile, Mr suessl reminded the group that SC paper works took around 2 years but that MFCpaper works should go quicker.

To speed the assessment phase, remote proofs will be used as the group felt that hardproofs quality has become consistent enough nowadays.

Next WOWG meeting will be held at Roularta on October 9, 2007.

Interrogated about availability of MFC paper data, Mr Suessl replied that WOWG data will be delivered to other ECI groups.

Mr Suessl indicated that Quality assessment of conformance of ISOwebcoated data with ISO data is currently undertaken.

ISOwebcoated Profile will be updated soon to compensate for less yellow paper in response to industry request and expressed needs.

Mr Suessl indicated that ECI/BVDM GraCon media wedge was released and used in the industry.

He expressed the wish of seeing this mediawedge more widely used.

Everybody agreed that GraCon mediawedge deserved more communication and promotion efforts.

Mr Suessl said that he is about to publish a document describing the process of building a profile from characetrization data.

He also said that Heidelberg software is used for profile building for copyright reasons.

Karl Koch from Color Solutions agreed to have his company profiles royalty free too for ECI.

Mr Suessl indicated that he will respect an opening for other candidatures before the process starts.

A small group formed by persons non related to software vendors, and a group with profile vendors will be formed. Nevertheless, decisions regarding profiles sshall be taken by non- venders members.

ECI will support the results of the works of this group which should be formed by September.

Mr Suessl asked if it was time to have a vote on the procedure.

Klaus-Hermann Otto asked if the same procedure applies to gravure WG.

Darrian Young asked for some clarification regarding profile names with regard to mentionning process type - sheetfed vs web - and wether TAC mention in profiles is understandable by users.

Renate Rewer reminded that publishing and using profiles made with different profile makers leads to potential inter-operability problems.

Henrik Schmidt said that ECI objective was to deliver good characterisation data, not necessarily profiles.

Mr Suessl said that in any case Profile vendors should not publicize the fact that ECI profiles were made using their software.

A motion was made regarding the creation of a new Profile WG, The vote was 23 in favor and 1 abstention.

RESOLVED, to move in the direction of having Profile WG work on new profiles and revised profiles as described.

Mr Adam attended the meeting on behalf of Karl Meinecke who had an unfortunate bicycle accident.

Mr Adam said that BVDM was working on Publishing BVDM publications and PrintMedia Production Forum: print-media-production-forum.de

Mr Adam informed ECI that BVDM is working on a new ATS application kit due for Q2 2008. A summary document and new images printouts in the form of a nice postcard album was distributed to attendeeds. Mr Adam also showed some package elements: DVDs, booklet etc…

A BVDM Press conference on this subject is due next Thursday.

Claudio Willemanns from University of Wuppertal presented DPF 2007 edition.

He indicated that this year's forum will include:

• Remote proofing
• Evaluation of current MW concepts
• Certification concepts

Olaf Drümmer comments statistics of ECI web site traffic showing significant number of hits increase.

Dietmar Wüller indicated that workgroup works are in progress and mainly:

• implementation of RGB Test Suite including roman 16 → ISO. An updatei splanned for the next ECI meeting
• revision of DigiPix brochure is planned. Help would be appreciated, currently only Dieter Dolezal and Dietmar Wuehler are doing the works. Since there is no time pressure for the

publication, release time may be of 1 to 1.5 years)

• bring eciRGB v2 to ISO. Proposal has been submitted to ISO TC end of June. No problems are expected and the specification should be incorporated as in international standard

following a fast track).

• ISO works on revision of existing standard of TIFF EP (ISO 12234-3 or -4), EP for electronic picture. Focus on metadata (licensing information, different formats such as IPTC, XMP etc.)

How to deal with problems caused by functions provided by RAW applications such as Aperture, Light Room, Camera Raw which change image and respective metadata, changed metadata inconsistently written back into file.

Hanno Hoffstadt indicated that workgroup works should refocus on workflow issues.

WG coating includes five active members.

WG Topics and works include print samples with/without coating/varnishing. Comparison of calculated color result and color measured on print with coating/varnish.

Next meeting topics: describe various concepts of coating. Guidance for practical. How to deal with low quality up to high quality. eparate proofs for press man (without coating) and client (color of coated/varnished print)

Mr Schützenhofer indicated that Workflow WG still has limited ressources. He said that the WG plans to set up a wiki with workflow issues and possible solutions. WG members will receive e-mail with access information.

He ended his report by saying that the WG has currently no input from its members

• Intergraph Meeting on ISO print standardization in Amsterdam
• discussion about how to better communicate existing information about print standards (mainly German) in other countries.
• plan to have annual meeting to better share experiences
• press conference on Intergraph meeting was planned for today, postponed
• Joint WG of TC 130 and TC 6 (paper) to discuss future of paper standardization
• different paper types

Otherwise, the proposed schedule was approved. There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:05 pm.

Meeting minutes by Elie Koury and Florin Süssl.