CGATs 21 - Reference Print Conditions Gamut Sampler

The industry has supplied seven Characterized Reference Printing Conditions (CRPC's) to help print buyers visualize the affect of the substrate on the printed job. These CPRC's are designed to be process agnostic, so it can be used to simulate virtually any type of printing on different quality levels of substrates. If your process does not coincide with any of these seven CRPC's then you need to make a custom Characterization set for your process.

This tool is used to help customers understand the difference of printing on different substrates. Paper is the fifth color in four color printing and greatly influences the gamut. Paper is also one of the most expensive components of a printing job. This tool was developed to help customers understand the affect of Substrate on the Printing Result. This helps set the customers expectations in terms of what the result will look like. This product is manufactured in two editions:  Basic and Extended

Basic Edition

This Edition includes eight pages printed on semigloss paper which shows the difference between the source file (RGB 1) and 7 Characterized Reference Printing Conditions (CRPC) defined by CGATS21.  The 7 CPRC's are available in seven profiles that are available to download from the color.org webpage. They can be used to simulate different printing aims based on different substrates.

Paper used for in this kit does not have enough Lightness to reach the white point defined in RPC-7 (hence the asterisk next to the description). 

Extended Edition

The Extended Edition consists of the Basic Edition pages plus four additional pages that are printed on high glossy paper.

Additional pages consist of:

RGB 2 , CRPC -6, CRPC-7 and an RPC-8 based on a beta ICC profile generated by ChromaChecker based on the draft version of the new virtual RPC - which is larger than any current printing device, but can be used to push the maximum gamut of any device while maintaining hue angles of CMYKRGB and maintain G7 gray balance.

As all additional pages are printed on high glossy substrate additional semi matt/ glossy comarision can be made. 

CRPC

To learn more about Characterized Reference Printing Conditions or related icc profiles visit :

• www.color.org
• www.npes.org/
• www.idealliance.org 

 Basic Edition

This page contains wide gamut color managed pictures.
Go to Web Browser Tester  to check if you can see it properly.

How to?

To understand differences between CRPSs, the first step is to become familiar with the Master page used for comparison.  It consists of eight pictures plus 16 patches:

Master page defined in ProPhoto RGB 

Master file defined in ProPhoto RGB color space. Some of the pictures use extremely saturated colors that are out of gamut (not printable) on typical CMYK devices. For this sampler the original pictures were converted to a custom icc profile - to show the best common visual appearance for the selected condition. RGB 1 is rendered on semi-matte paper and RGB 2 is on glossy paper which enables a different range of color (gamut). 

Wide Gamut Pictures

There are three pictures that use colors out of most typical printing gamuts. The green grass, the red truck and the sterlizia flower are all images that are extremely saturated and have colors outside of typical CMYK printing devices.

White and Black Point

The dynamic range for each CRPC is limited by the color of the substrate and rich black. The two pictures in  third row, black staircase next to the white image are to help you compare the difference dynamic ranges between the CRPCs.

Compariosion example: CRPC1 vs RGB MASTER vs CRPC7

Color Differences between the 7 different gamuts

These Printing Aims are designed to represent the affect of substrate on the print process. Each of the Printing aims are different from one another. Ideally, customer defines the printing aim, then they define their color tolerance.
We have calculated the color differences between the 7 reference print conditions in terms of CRF (Cumulative Relevance Frequency at 95% percentile) and list them here (Delta E 2000):