ISO/TC 130 - Graphic technology

This document specifies a colour profile format and describes the architecture within which it can operate. This architecture supports the exchange of information which specifies the intended colour image processing of digital data. The required reference colour spaces and the data structures (tags) are also specified.

This document defines the layout and colorimetric values of targets for use in the calibration of a photographic product/input scanner combination (as used in the preparatory process for printing and publishing). One target is defined for positive colour transparency film and another is defined for colour photographic paper.

This document establishes principles for the use of colour characterization data as the definition of the intended relationship between input data and printed colour for file preparation, job assembly, proofing, and graphic arts production printing. It specifies the procedure used to adjust colour characterization data for the normally expected range of substrate colour.

This document defines a process independent measurement method for the evaluation of graininess of printed products. It provides requirements for the test form and measurement devices to be used as well as the formulas to compute the colour graininess score (SCG).

This document specifies the Contrast–Resolution test chart, the requirements on the printing process needed to reproduce this test chart, the required characteristics of a high resolution scanner needed to digitize the information reproduced on printed test charts, and the requirements on the interpretation of this digitized data. It also specifies the resolution-score method for evaluating the perceptual resolution of printed material using the Contrast–Resolution test chart. The procedure specified in this document is intended for a characterization of the perceived resolution of a graphic arts production printing system using the Contrast–Resolution test chart.

This document applies to processless lithographic plates and specifies evaluation methods for lithographic plate characteristics, on-press development performance, usability and print image quality. It specifies measurement conditions for materials and equipment and provides guidelines for the selection of suitable processless lithographic plates by a printing organization and requirements for comparative assessment tests. The assessment of waterless lithographic plates is out of scope of this document. NOTE Some of these methods can be used for the evaluation of all classes of lithographic plate. This document specifies measurement conditions for materials and equipment and provides guidelines for the selection of suitable processless lithographic plates by a printing organization and requirements for comparative assessment tests.

This document provides safety requirements specific to binding and finishing equipment and systems. It provides additional safety requirements for the design and construction of new equipment used to convert printed or blank substrates into cut, folded, collated, assembled, bound, or otherwise finished product. This document is applicable to processes for preparing substrate for the printing process. It is also applicable to a wide range of equipment used in the binding and finishing process.

This document provides safety requirements specific to prepress and press equipment and systems. This document provides additional safety requirements for the design and construction of new prepress and press equipment, and the auxiliary equipment integrated into the press control system. This document is not applicable to prepress and press equipment and systems manufactured before the date of its publication.

This document provides safety requirements specific to stand-alone platen presses. This document provides additional safety requirements for the design and construction of manually-fed stand-alone platen presses, for single stroke mode, dwell mode, and continuous operation mode for cutting and creasing, embossing, foil stamping and/or printing of paper, board and other materials processed in a similar manner. This document does not apply to presses designed to handle metal material other than foil.

This document deals with all significant hazards, hazardous situations or hazardous events relevant to converting equipment and systems used in the corrugated board, package printing, converting and graphic technology industries (see Clause 5), when it is used as intended and under conditions of misuse which are reasonably foreseeable by the manufacturer. This document is applicable to converting equipment not covered by other parts of ISO 12643. This document is not applicable to the machinery or machinery components manufactured before the date of its publication.

This document provides safety specifications for the design and construction of new equipment used in prepress systems, printing press systems, binding and finishing systems, converting systems, corrugated board manufacturing systems and stand‑alone platen presses. It is applicable to equipment used in stand-alone mode, or in combination with other machines, including ancillary equipment, in which all the machine actuators (e.g. drives) of the equipment are controlled by the same control system. The requirements given in this document are applicable to the equipment covered by ISO 12643 (all parts), unless otherwise noted. This document is intended to be used in conjunction with the applicable part of ISO 12643 that contains additional requirements specific to a particular type of equipment. This document addresses recognized significant hazards specific to equipment and systems in the following areas: — mechanical; — electrical; — slipping, tripping, falling; — ergonomics; — noise; — UV and laser radiation; — fire and explosion; — thermal; — substances and material used for processing; — failure, malfunction of control system; — other types of emissions [e.g. ozone, ink mist, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), etc.]. This document is not applicable to: — equipment manufactured before the date of its publication; — ordinary office equipment for digital printing and paper processing, such as digital printers, copiers, sorters, binders and staplers, which is intended for use outside the printing and paper industry; — winder-slitters and sheeters in paper finishing (sheeters with unwinders); — office-type collating machines equipped with friction feeders; — mail processing machines; — machines used for filling packages (such as machines for shaping, filling, and closing the package); and — textile printing presses. The safety principles established in this document can also be applicable to the design of equipment within areas of technology that are not specified in ISO 12643 (all parts).

This document describes four methods for the adjustment of the digital content data that is input to a printing system to achieve consistency in the printed results among a number of presses printing to the same general aim conditions. These four methods are generally identified as: 1) matching of tone value curves (TVI and CTV), 2) use of near-neutral scales, 3) colour-optimised correction curve set, and 4) use of CMYK to CMYK multi-dimensional transforms. The procedures for establishing the aim condition for the necessary correction curves, the procedures for determining the individual correction curves, and a comparison of the applicability of these four methods are included. These adjustment procedures are intended for use with printing systems that use CMYK colourants. Such systems are not restricted to those that use traditional ink on paper printing but can involve other marking technologies such as those used for proofing and/or digital printing.

This document specifies requirements for multispectral imaging devices to measure and compare the decorative surfaces. Based on spatially resolved spectral measurement of reflecting surfaces, tristimulus images are computed. A metric is provided that reflects the visual closeness between a reference surface and a comparison surface using a single index called SIM_PDE. Recommendations are provided with regard to laboratory sample preparation. This document is not applicable to functional surfaces.

This document establishes procedures for the spatially resolved spectral measurement of reflecting flat objects, including inline colour measurements. It also establishes procedures for computation of colorimetric parameters for graphic arts multispectral imaging devices. Graphic arts includes, but is not limited to, the preparation of material for and volume production by production printing processes that include offset lithography, letterpress, flexography, gravure, screen and all kind of digital printing. This document does not address spatially resolved spectral measurements of transmitting or self-illuminating objects including flat-panel displays. This document is not applicable to step and repeat spot reading scanning instruments. It does not address printing on a metallic or interference foil.

This document defines a measurement method for the evaluation of distortions in the macroscopic uniformity of printed areas that are oriented in the horizontal and vertical direction, such as streaks and bands. It provides requirements for the layout of the test form, the use of a colour measurement device taking measurements in a 2D sampling grid, and the formula to compute the Macro-Uniformity-Score. This document does not cover any non-adjacent or non-horizontal nor vertical patterns. Due to the used spatial frequency, the Macro-Uniformity-Score does not measure high frequency (fine) patterns such as missing nozzles.

This document specifies a method of measuring the visual opacity of printed specimens of white ink. It is applicable to printing opaque white ink on transparent and white or coloured opaque substrates.

This document specifies symbols for use in copy preparation and proof correction in alphabetic languages and in logographic languages. It is applicable to texts submitted for correction whatever their nature or presentation (manuscripts, typescripts, printer’s proofs, etc.) and for marking up copy for all methods of composition. Symbols for the correction of mathematical texts and colour illustrations are not included.

This document specifies a test method for preparation of test prints produced with liquid printing inks, either water-based, solvent-based or radiation cured printing inks as used in flexography and gravure printing. Such test prints are intended to be used for reflection-based measurements, such as colorimetry and optical density as well as for testing light fastness, and the resistance of printing inks to mechanical and chemical attack regarding either printing ink and/or substrate. This document is not applicable to inks for ink jet printing.

The ISO 22067 series specifies requirements and criteria for communication of environmental aspects within the print production supply chain. This document specifies requirements for environmental communication on print production, including all processes and print components used for the production of the final printed materials. This document is applicable for most printing methods but excludes, due to their unique processing requirements, printing on textiles and ceramics. NOTE Recognising established environmental communication, provision is made (see Clause 4) to permit communication of environmental information for paper, board or other substrates based on requirements and guidelines provided by standards organizations or industry bodies.

This document defines an exchange format for colour and process control data (and the associated metadata necessary for its proper interpretation) in electronic form using either XML or ASCII formatted data files. This exchange format maintains human readability of the data as well as enabling machine readability. It includes a series of predefined tags and keywords, and provides extensibility through provision for the dynamic definition of additional tags and keywords as necessary. It is focused primarily on spectral measurement data, colorimetric data, and densitometric data. This document is intended to be used in conjunction with other standards that will define the required data, and tags or keywords for specific data exchange applications.

This document specifies a set of standard large gamut colour images (encoded as 16-bit CIELAB digital data) that can be used for the evaluation of changes in image quality during coding, image processing (including transformation, compression and decompression), displaying on a colour monitor and printing. These images can be used for research, testing and assessing of output systems such as printers, colour management systems and colour profiles.

This document provides guidelines and a procedure to generate a multicolour characterization dataset. Specifications for colour printing with CMYK + Orange, Green, and Violet are presented. Also, this document provides a recommendation on CMYKOGV ink pigment selections to produce an optimum colour gamut for specific printing processes or use cases. The recommended CMYKOGV ink pigment selections might not be suitable or available for all printing or digital processes or use cases. The procedure in this document is also applicable for CMYK plus any subset of O, G or V.

This document specifies a test method for the evaluation of the paper coating strength in the inner fold. The test method is intended for single or multiple coated papers up to a thickness of 150 µm that can be folded without creasing.

This document specifies the set of metadata to be used to communicate the approval status, proof preparation and viewing parameters for images and documents that are used in the graphic arts print production workflow.

This document defines procedures to measure and compare the colour gamuts of RGB and CMYK printing processes. It is not applicable to other printing processes.

This document specifies an extensible file format in conformity with W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0, for the exchange of print quality requirements data and metadata between print quality control applications including, but not limited to, print quality management systems. This document is not intended for automating the loading of print requirement goals into the quality control systems employed by print quality service providers.

This document defines a data set of ink value combinations that can be used to characterize four-colour process printing. This data set is not optimized for any printing process or application area but is robust enough for all general applications. While it is primarily aimed at process colour printing with CMYK inks, it can also be used with any combination of three chromatic inks and a dark ink. This document is an alternative to the ISO 12642‑2 data set where more neutral scale data are desired. It is not designed as a replacement for ISO 12642-2.

This document specifies requirements for a security printing management system for security printers. This document specifies a minimum set of security printing management system requirements. Organizations ensure that customer security requirements are met as appropriate, provided these do not conflict with the requirements of this document.

This document specifies requirements for systems that are used to produce offset prints for process colour reproduction on metallic substrates, which have been printed with a white coating. It is intended for flat printed sheet metal applications. It does not cover shaped or pre-formed metal such as pre-formed cans. Recommendations are provided with regard to appropriate test methods associated with these requirements. This document differs from the method used to produce an offset print on paper or board in ISO 12647-2 in that it considers the colour values of a typical white coated metal substrate intended for metal decoration, using offset lithography and substrates that are independent of backing colour.

This document describes a laboratory test method, using an IGT1-type or a prüfbau2-type printability tester, for the preparation of specimens to evaluate the absorption rate of an ink on a substrate in offset lithography by setting-off the printed surface to an unprinted surface. This method describes testing with an amount of ink simulating either single colour or multi-colour printing. The print and the set-off print (counter print) are made with interval times, between print and set-off, common for the target process. This method evaluates a particular ink and substrate combination. 1These materials are available from IGT Testing Systems, www.igt.nl. This information is given for the convenience of the users of this document and does not constitute an endorsement by ISO of the products. Equivalent products may be used if they can be shown to lead to the same results. 2These materials are available from prüfbau, Dr.-Ing. H. Dürner GmbH, www.pruefbau.de. This information is given for the convenience of the users of this document and does not constitute an endorsement by ISO of the products. Equivalent products may be used if they can be shown to lead to the same results.

This document specifies the width, length and thickness of metal lithographic printing plates (referred to hereafter as “plates”). For plates to be used in computer to plate (CtP) applications, flatness, edge straightness and burr requirements are also included. These requirements are applicable to unprocessed plates.

This document specifies requirements that can be used for determining the conformance of systems that produce a hard-copy validation print, directly from digital data, which is intended to simulate the expected appearance of material printed in accordance with a characterized printing condition. It is not intended for use in determining the conformance of production printing systems (digital or conventional) since many aspects of production printing are not covered in this document.

This document specifies offset ink related properties which are intended to be communicated between ink supplier and the printer, and which are essential for the optimized print production planning and the intended use of the final product. NOTE The final product is not necessarily the finished print product. Aspects related to food safety and other safety requirements like children's toys safety are not part of the scope of this document.

This document specifies methods of assessing the resistance of printed materials to liquid and solid agents, solvents, varnishes and acids. It applies to printing on all substrates by any of the traditional printing process (offset, screen, gravure, flexo) as well as the newer digital processes (inkjet, electrophotography). Aspects of food safety and consumer protection for food contact materials are not covered.

This document defines print quality metrics, measurement methods and reporting requirements for printed sheets that are suitable for all classes of printed products. Guidance as to which of these metrics to apply to any given product category along with acceptable conformance criteria is provided in subsequent parts of ISO/TS 15311. Although this document is expected to be used primarily to measure prints from digital printing systems, the metrics are general and can be applied to other kinds of print.

This document provides guidance for representatives of the paper value chain for the design of printed paper products, with a view to deinkability contributing to recyclability in support of the circular economy. It describes relevant deinking processes, and the deinking performance of printed paper products produced with different printing, finishing and converting technologies in those deinking processes. It provides a list of relevant quality characteristics of industrial deinked pulps and a list of their possible usages based on those characteristics. This document does not include guidance for paper-based products which are not intended to be deinked.

This document defines the PDF/VT-3 document format and methods to enable reliable document exchange for variable data and transactional (VT) printing. It uses the Portable Document Format (PDF) Version 2.0, as restricted by PDF/X-6, for the representation of such documents. It allows the specification of document structure and layout, content data, and interaction of graphics objects in a graphics model that supports transparency and both device-dependent and device-independent colour spaces. All elements are either included or provision is made for unique identification of externally supplied ICC profiles. PDF/VT-3 is designed to enable variable data and transactional printing in a variety of environments from desktop printers to digital production presses. This includes hybrid workflows involving both conventional and digital printing.

This document specifies the use of ISO 32000‑2 (PDF 2.0) for the complete and partial exchange of digital data intended for print reproduction.

This document specifies a test procedure for the preparation of test prints on paper, board, metals, foils and other suitable substrates using paste inks, such as for offset and letterpress printing, using electrically driven IGT-type and prüfbau-type printability testers. This document describes the procedure for reference optical density and reference ink film thickness. This document describes the method as used on the current models of testers. Most of the described procedures are also applicable in analogy to the older models but can require additional steps to be executed or recalculation of the settings to make them conform to this document

This document provides recommended guidelines for the evaluation of colour reproduction capability in the printing of packaging materials. It provides a basis for the development of colour certification schemes by individual brand owners and/or industry associations and for the evaluation of printed results against those schemes. Because the package printing supply chain involves multiple partners, both the potential impact of each partner on the overall colour control and the individual responsibilities of each partner are identified in this document. The unique requirements of the individual reproduction processes and their impact on colour reproduction are also identified.

This document specifies the requirements for the exchange of data and information necessary for the definition of the aims for four-colour flexographic printing of packaging and publication materials, including newsprint. It is based on the use of colour characterization data to define the colourimetric printing aims and includes appropriate assignment of responsibility for and recommended tolerances on critical parameters of the flexographic printing process. This document is directly applicable to: — publication flexographic printing including magazines, catalogues and commercial materials and packaging flexographic printing including labels, boxes, and flexible packages; — half-tone and continuous tone proofing processes that predict the colourimetric results of flexographic printing. Guidance is also provided concerning the definition of spot colours used in flexographic printing.

This document describes procedures for the assessment and validation of the performance of an optical spectrometer intended for use in capturing the spectral reflectance factor or the spectral radiance factor of printed areas comprised of non-fluorescent or fluorescent materials, respectively. While it does not describe the application to transmitting materials directly, many of the procedures can be applied to transmitting systems by backing them with a reflective white backing material. This document does not address spectral measurements appropriate to other specific application needs, such as those used during the production of materials (e.g. printing paper and proofing media), which are well described by ISO standards under the jurisdiction of ISO/TC 6. It does not describe the special requirements for testing instruments that make in-process or online colour measurements.

This document specifies an extensible file format in conformity with W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0, for the exchange of print quality data and metadata between quality control applications including but not limited to colour measurement, process control and quality management systems.

This document provides a framework that organisations can follow, and that can be used as the structure for market or sector specific schemes. It is intended to be a process certification. The goal of this document is to have comparable attestations or certifications worldwide.

This document describes procedures for evaluating the accuracy of colorimetric rendering intents in ICC profiles. It applies to v4 ICC profiles made according to ISO 15076-1. It does not apply to subjective tests of ICC profiles, such as for perceptual or saturation rendering intents, and it does not apply to high dynamic range colour media or spaces.

This document defines a framework for advanced reflective and transmissive layouts and colorimetric values of targets for use in the calibration and characterization of image capturing devices. This document defines a framework for target creation and data reporting. This framework can be used for both ISO defined and custom targets for both reflective and transmissive use. Self-emissive targets are not covered by this document.

The document part metadata in a PDF file that conforms to this document can be used to communicate the intended appearance of print products and their components. Examples of intended use are: direct interpretation within a production process, creation of job tickets such as XJDF, or populating records in an MIS. This document builds on the DPart syntax as specified in ISO 16612‑2 (PDF/VT) and ISO 32000‑2 (PDF 2.0) which is designed for encoding metadata related to pages or groups of pages in PDF files. NOTE The document part metadata provided in this document applies to individual document parts, whereas XMP metadata typically applies to the scope of the entire document. XMP can apply to the scope of an individual page or part of a page but this usage is very uncommon. Thus, XMP is not applicable for the case where metadata is required for sets of pages such as multiple recipients or binding information. For example, XMP is used within PDF/X for file conformance identification and is also used for additional file level information such as author. This document defines standardized metadata to: — provide product intent specifications such as paper media selection and binding information; — identify the type of product that the content pages are intended to represent (e.g. a brochure, letter or postcard); — identify the intended recipient of each of the content pages for variable document printing applications. This document defines a base conformance level that includes the syntax of the metadata framework and the semantics of a core set of metadata.

This document is based on ISO 15076-1, and describes an expanded profile specification and profile connections that permit greater flexibility and functionality than ISO 15076-1. All definitions and requirements in ISO 15076-1 are therefore in force unless otherwise specified by this document. This document defines minimum structural and operational requirements for writing and reading ICC profiles. Additional workflow requirements and restrictions are defined in domain-specific interoperability conformance specification (ICS) documents approved and registered by the ICC. In this document, some ISO 15076-1 types have been removed, and others have been added. A colour management module (CMM) compatible with profiles conforming to this document will have backwards compatibility with profiles conforming to ISO 15076-1. Where the name of a type in this document is the same as a type in ISO 15076-1, the type definition is based on the ISO 15076-1 definition. The exception is the definition of the MPE type, which has been expanded. Where the extensions described in this document are not required in a particular workflow, ISO 15076-1 is used as the basis for colour management profiles and architectures.