Case Study: Simon Printing
Texas-based printer leverages innovative calibration and colour-matching technology to deliver accurate, high-quality results
About our customer
Simon Printing Company is a family-owned business and has been printing marketing solutions in Houston for over 85 years. They strive to help their customers grow by branding, producing, printing, mailing, and fulfilling effective and impactful marketing collateral. They have a team of experienced professionals who ensure that any digital, offset, web, or wide format job is produced to the highest standard.
“Getting the RICOH Auto Colour Adjuster was a no-brainer for us. Keeping digital presses in line isn’t an easy thing colour-wise, but we wanted to give ourselves and our customers the best shot with accurate colour-matching technology.”
— Tucker Simon, Digital Printing Manager
Challenge
Several printer leases were expiring
Time-consuming colour calibration for printers
Needed an easier way to meet industry colour standards and create ICC profiles
Calibration and near-perfect print colour matching have traditionally been challenging and time-consuming as previous technology had to go through many steps, from printing a colour chart to scanning and cutting until it was the right colour. When Simon Printing’s leases came up on older, non-Ricoh brand printers, they turned to Ricoh for options. The timing was serendipitous with the launch of Ricoh’s new Auto Colour Adjuster which offered simple, precise colour-matching technology without the time and subjective judgment that is often required.
Additionally, creating ICC (International Colour Consortium) profiles, which are sets of data that tell printers how to interpret the colour, could take up to an hour, slowing down the overall printing process.
Solution
“Buy it. The Auto Colour Adjuster simplifies the process and removes all the guesswork from calibration and print colour matching. It was easy to set up and it does what it’s supposed to do — well.”
— Tucker Simon, Digital Printing Manager
Selected two RICOH Pro C9210 digital printers
Integrated the RICOH Auto Colour Adjuster with both printers
Simon Printing invested in two RICOH Pro C9210 printers and added the Auto Colour Adjuster, which has multi-device capabilities to profile and offers colour match capabilities significantly faster and easier than anything else on the market to date.
“Getting the RICOH Auto Colour Adjuster was a no-brainer for us. Keeping digital presses in line isn’t an easy thing colour-wise, but we wanted to give ourselves and our customers the best shot with accurate colour-matching technology,” said Tucker Simon, Digital Printing Manager. “It was super easy to install, and we hit the ground running on day one.”
Simon Printing adheres to G7 compliance standards for their print devices. Simon explained, “It’s rare we need to use colour sample matching because the machines are consistent with Auto Colour Adjuster. We’ve incorporated it into our everyday processes.”
The Auto Colour Adjuster functionality also allows for fast output of ICC profiles.
Results
90% reduction in time spent on calibration
ICC profiles are now created in a few minutes instead of an hour
Confidence in print consistency
Before, with the old printers, they would calibrate each printer about four times (for a total of eight times per day for both machines), which could take up to 10 minutes, for a total of 40 minutes based on an 8-hour shift. With the Auto Colour Adjuster technology, we go beyond calibration by creating profiles and our times are down to about 30 seconds, for a total of four minutes — a 90% reduction in time for that process. “We are able to gain extra ‘run time’ every day,” said Simon.
“The best part about the Auto Colour Adjuster is that it takes such a short amount of time to create an ICC profile. Having one device to profile multiple printers at the same time is unprecedented. Now you can just print something and it can be automatically colour-matched and profiled correctly,” stated Simon. He further explained that it could take up to an hour to scan an ICC file and get it right. However, with the RICOH Auto Colour Adjuster, it now takes only a few minutes.
Simon offered a tip to other print shops: “Buy it. The Auto Colour Adjuster simplifies the process and removes all the guesswork from calibration and print colour matching. It was easy to set up and it does what it’s supposed to do — well.”
Learn more about the benefits of Ricoh’s Auto Colour Adjuster and gain confidence in every colour.