(Excerpt from SGIA article, Product Weathering Becomes Visual. Full article here.)
Most of the work done in weathering inks and media for screen printing has revolved around the printing of spot or solid colors. This was appropriate for sign painting, but it is less than adequate for modern full color images. Most printed images today are reproduced with CMYK
inks. It is uncommon for a full-color image today to have large solid areas of just C, M or Y. We do know that when we weather a tonal ramp with the different dot percentages of C, M, Y or K, that the lighter tones will degrade much faster than the solid areas. Most full-color images have a near infinite number of colors trapping each other in varying degrees. We know that the magenta and yellow degrade much faster than the cyan and black. All this combined means that traditional solid color weathering is not applicable to process color images.
There is a new full-color weathering process that will create an accurate full-color representation of how each of the four colors (CMYK) will change throughout the entire tonal range.
The Nazdar Consulting Group worked to
define and prove a solution to this problem.
Development of our solution has taken
years as the work was done with both real
time and accelerated weathering samples.
We have used our color management
experience to generate accurate GamutBased
Image Predictor profiles. This has
been collaboration over the course of
years. Instead of weathering solid patches
of color, we weather the full tonal range of
CMYK color in order to create a full color,
full tonal range rendering of how color will
degrade in all colors, at all different tonal
and color build ranges.
Color weathering data is now real and
most importantly, visual. The Gamut-Based
Image Predictor is created by
applying weathering profiles that have
been created from actual weathering
data showing one year increments of
weathering for a particular ink media
combination.
In the art department, a designer can
apply a weathering profile to images in
the design stages in order to make the
best choice of colors in backgrounds,
skin tones, foods and product placement
that will have the longest lasting
acceptable color. Accurate color proofs
can be generated prior to approving
a job for sales presentations. This can
help the sales group to visually sell more
durable constructions, or maybe even
less durable ones for some applications.
Multiple year weathering profiles allow
a printer to replace a damaged panel on an older installation with accuracy. Most
important, the weathering information
can be applied visually to images prior
to production.