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Reasons why XELIOS artificial solar lighting are chosen for color evaluation of printed output

What are the three reasons why printer manufacturers use artificial solar lighting?

In recent years, the performance of printers has improved considerably. In addition to general document printing, photo printing, and other types of printing can now be done at home. Printers that are convenient and easy to use, not only in terms of image quality, but also in terms of printing speed, cost, ease of ink replacement, and Bluetooth support, are being sold one after another, and competition among printer manufacturers is intensifying.

There are two main types of printers currently on the market; inkjet printers and laser printers. Inkjet printers are mainly for home use, and laser printers are mainly for commercial use. The inkjet printers are good at small size (A4 or smaller) color printing. The laser printers, on the other hand, are suitable for larger size printing (A3 or larger) and when high-volume printing is required.

In addition, there are differences in prices of printers, costs of toner cartridges, and performances of printers depending on the manufacturer. Each printer has its own characteristics and strengths, and weaknesses, so we recommend that you compare the specifications and costs of each manufacturer’s product when selecting a printer.

The colors of printed materials may differ slightly depending on the printer manufacturer.

The output of the printer is, needless to say, printing. The colors are created by mixing the four colors; cyan, magenta, yellow (CMY, the three primary colors), and Key Plate (K). The camera, on the other hand, creates images with a mixture of red, green, and blue (RGB, the three primary colors of light).

By the way, in principle, if you mix all colors in CMY, it will be black, and if you mix all colors in RGB, it will be white. This is actually quite tricky. This is because the three primary colors of color and the three primary colors of light have a different color range that they can reproduce. In other words, colors created with the three primary colors of light (RGB) may not be reproducible with the three primary colors of color (CMY). For this reason, it is not uncommon for the colors of the images you take or the designs you create on your PC to be different when you print them.

A color matching (color management) system is an approach in which each printer manufacturer uses its own method to determine the color of the digital image and print. In fact, these are the reasons why the colors may differ slightly from printer to printer when printing images taken with a digital camera.

Reasons for using visual inspection to evaluate the color identity of a printed image

The introduction has become long, but the color identity of a image when a captured image is printed is evaluated visually. This is because color analysis of the actual objects from which images are taken is not possible in many cases. The colors of the images taken can be quantified, but these are quantified in RGB format, and CMYK uses a different indicator, which makes it difficult to compare them. In addition, it takes a lot of time and effort to quantify complex colors and detailed patterns of multiple colors one by one.

These are done by printer manufacturers during the development stage, but when toner variation is taken into account as a variable factor, it is only possible to compare quantified data using a limited number of samples. An easier and more accurate method of evaluation and management is visual inspection, although it may seem old-fashioned.

Three advantages of using artificial solar lighting for color evaluation (visual inspection) of printed output

The light source is very important when visual inspection is carried out to evaluate the colors of the printed output. Until now, our artificial solar lighting has been highly evaluated by many users as a standard light source for color evaluation.

The reasons for this can be broken down into three advantages:

– The artificial solar lighting has the best characteristics in the world as a light source for accurately evaluating and managing colors, and its optical characteristics are very close to natural sunlight around noon (±2 hours) on a clear day.
– Direct current lighting prevents flickering, so eyes don’t get tired.
– Since time-course changes are extremely small, the characteristics as an evaluation light source do not deteriorate, and the product can be used for a long time.

The artificial solar lighting SERIC XELIOS XG-100AF and XG-500AF for color evaluation are ideal for use in color evaluation of printed output. If the size of the evaluation sample is A4 size or smaller, the 100W series is used, and if the sample size is A4 size or larger, the 500W series is used.

Reasons why XELIOS artificial solar lighting are chosen for color evaluation of printed output

Refer to the following page for specifications and performance.

If you want to evaluate your printed materials with higher accuracy, please feel free to contact our highly experienced team.

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・Artificial Solar Lighting – XELIOS 500W Series
・Artificial Solar Lighting – XELIOS 100W Series