COLOR COMBINATIONS CUSTOMIZE
COMMUNICATIONS
With the increase of color usage in the document
imaging market and the impact color can have on a document, it is important for
companies to determine the most effective way to use color printing. According
to Océ, it all comes down to figuring out the appropriate degree of color
needed to accomplish a customer’s business objective. What most people think of
as color printing is “process color” printing, whereby cyan, magenta, yellow
and black toners combine to produce various color images. In contrast, with
highlight color, which is also referred to as spot color, a specified color (or
colors) is used to highlight certain areas of a primarily monochrome document.
A good example of the prevalence of highlight color printing can be seen in the
mailings received by the typical business or consumer in a given month. A
variety of documents, from billing statements to car ads, use highlight colors
to make specific parts of their documents stand out, or to call attention to a
corporate logo.
Highlight Color Technology
The use of highlight color while mass-producing
documents can work in a couple of different ways. Some offices use pre-printed
forms, whereby color portions of a document are printed by using a color-enabled
device and then passed through a black-and-white printer to add the black
elements to the page. Another way of producing highlight color can be seen in
Océ’s VarioPrint 5000 (cut-sheet) and VarioStream 7000 (continuous-feed)
series. These systems utilize Océ’s Quick Change Developer System (QCDS)
technology. To add a highlight color, the user replaces the black toner and
developer housed in the developer station in one or two of the print engines
(VarioStream 7000 units can be equipped with up to three separate engines) with
a specific color, enabling one device to print a document containing both black
and a highlight color.
Xerox uses a similar method, including what Xerox
calls a customer-changeable unit (CCU) on its DocuTech series of highlight color-enabled
digital presses (the DocuTech 128, 155 and 180 Highlight Color Systems But
whereas Océ systems utilizing QCDS require sheets to pass through two separate
engines to add a highlight color to a document, Xerox highlight color systems
can place black and color on the page in a single pass. Xerox says this enables
users to print in monochrome or color at the same print speed.
Another example of highlight color technology can be
seen in Océ’s VarioStream 9000 series (continuous-feed), which prints both
black and a highlight color, or full-color, on both sides of a document in a
single pass. The VarioStream 9000 series utilizes dual print engines that allow
for up to five developer stations and toner boxes in each engine to be mounted
along it.
HP’s Indigo presses, which also have the ability to
produce highlight color, have a developer station within the print engine for
each color (up to seven colors, depending on the model) as well. The HP Indigo
series of production presses use an electrophotographic Photo Imaging Plate
(PIP), which is mounted onto the imaging cylinder in the print engine. The PIP
receives a uniform static charge as the PIP cylinder rotates, which replicates
the image to be printed. Binary Ink Developer (BID) units, which house each
color, help transfer the ink onto the image area. The opposing electrical
fields between the PIP and the BID attract the ink particles to the image area
and repel them from the non-image areas and then the image is transferred to
the substrate. This process is repeated for each color.
Why Choose Highlight Color?
According to Océ and Xerox, toners for highlighting
documents provide consistent image quality and cost less since only one toner
is being used to create the highlight color—as opposed to process colors that
are created by combining cyan, magenta, yellow and black toner. Just as when a
typical process color unit wastes toner if printing black in full-color mode,
producing a specific highlight color using CMYK (when all that the customer
needs out of the unit is one particular highlight color) is also not
cost-effective—since multiple color toners, rather than a single toner, are
being used.
According to Xerox, another benefit for its customers
is the lack of a click count for color usage. Since customers pay for their
specific color ahead of time, they only have to pay a per-sheet click charge
for the black print. For Océ products utilizing the QCDS, this is also true,
however, with the VarioStream 9000 series, customers are charged a base click
for black usage (often calculated by the amount of linear feet used) and then
an “additive” charge for color usage, which is a percentage of the cost of the
black click charge.
As mentioned earlier, another benefit of highlight
color technology is its consistency from the first print to the last. For
companies who use color only for specific applications, such as placing their
company logo on outgoing mail or highlighting past due sections on billing
statements, a highlight color device could suit them just fine. For these types
of operations, Guy Broadhurst, Océ’s vice president of product management, says
highlight color allows customers to get increased speed and flexibility and
reduced overall cost. But most important, says Broadhurst, “Every time we
produce a document, we get the same color every single time. No guess work. And
it’s become tremendous for us and our customers to be able to do that; because,
for all of us, whether you’re Océ or any other company, our logo is our bread
and butter.”
Noting that customers shouldn’t have to choose between
full-color or highlight color, Broadhurst says it’s more about “job appropriate
color,” which is matching the appropriate type of color device to the specific
application. Stay tuned for the in-depth article in the November issue of Digital
Imaging Review.
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