ECG 7-Color Mixes in a PDF, Economically

This Membernar is a follow-up to the expanded color gamut (ECG) project presented at FTA’s Fall Technical Conference 2023.

Bill, Chuck and Steve will explain and demonstrate a simple, affordable ECG workflow based on international standards. A significant advantage of ECG is the ability to simulate spot colors from the expanded gamut of colors offered by the printing process. Unfortunately, Adobe Creative Suite does not support the orange, green and violet used for a spot color simulation.

Watch a live demonstration of a free software tool that replaces a list of spot colors in a PDF with ECG mixes that include orange, green and violet. Until now, this could only be accomplished with expensive and proprietary software.

Join Bill, Chuck and Steve as they present an efficient and economical way to get 7-color (CMYKOGV) mixes to replace spot colors in your PDF files—with free software.

You will see how this new free software tool fits into a complete 7-Color ECG workflow that you can try right now with little to no investment.

About Our Presenters

Steve Smiley, SmileyColor & Associates

Steve Smiley is a 50-year veteran from print, premedia and packaging brand solutions. Steve’s previous position was managing color across all printing types, commercial, direct mail and packaging, managing print globally. Steve is a proud member of the FTA family, participating at annual FORUMs. As a brand manager, Steve has developed the tools for physical and digital standards to define common ingredients and aims across supply chain partners, along with supporting documents like ISO 12647-6 Flexographic Prints, ISO 17972-4 CxF X4 Spot Color Characterization Exchange Format and ISO 19303-1 Guidelines for Schema Writers Packaging. He is the recipient of the Holzinger Award, FTA President’s Award and the Clemson Top Cat Award. Steve has a degree in photography. In 2017, he was inducted into the FTA Hall of Fame.

William Birkett, Doppelganger LLC

William Birkett has engineering degrees from the University of Michigan. After a short stint in the automotive business, he started a prepress company, Precision Color Inc, which prospered for many years. He and a colleague, Charles Spontelli, got involved with print standards in 2003. Together, they developed a press calibration technique based on measurements of near-neutral colors. Since 2005, William has worked as a print quality consultant. At the TAGA annual meeting in 2018, William and Charles introduced an improved calibration technique known as The Optimal Method. Since then, they’ve developed an open-source software tool, PressCal, to implement this improved technique. William is glad for the opportunity to apply his math and engineering skills to help the printing industry.

Charles Spontelli, Bowling Green State University

Charles has worked in some facet of the printing industry his entire career. He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, with a Master of Science from the School of Printing. He is an associate professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University. Charles taught courses in printing technology and color applications. Charles and William Birkett have collaborated on color calibration for printing research since 2003. William and Charles created the Colorimetric Tone Value which is now Spot Color Tone Value (SCTV), an ISO standard. Their color calibration research has evolved to become “The Optimal Method” for making calibration curves. These curves direct a printing process to optimally match any ICC or proprietary color reference.