Case Study: Simon Printing
Printer leverages innovative calibration and color-matching technology
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 Color Adjuster was a no-brainer for us. Keeping digital presses in line isn’t an easy thing color-wise, but we wanted to give ourselves and our customers the best shot with accurate color-matching technology.”
— Tucker Simon, Digital Printing Manager
Challenge
Several printer leases were expiring
Time-consuming color calibration for printers
Needed an easier way to meet industry color standards and create ICC profiles
Calibration and near-perfect print color matching have traditionally been challenging and time-consuming as previous technology had to go through many steps, from printing a color chart to scanning and cutting until it was the right color. 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 Color Adjuster which offered simple, precise color-matching technology without the time and subjective judgment that is often required.
Additionally, creating ICC (International Color Consortium) profiles, which are sets of data that tell printers how to interpret the color, could take up to an hour, slowing down the overall printing process.
Solution
“Buy it. The Auto Color Adjuster simplifies the process and removes all the guesswork from calibration and print color 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 Color Adjuster with both printers
Simon Printing invested in two RICOH Pro C9210 printers and added the Auto Color Adjuster, which has multi-device capabilities to profile and offers color match capabilities significantly faster and easier than anything else on the market to date.
“Getting the RICOH Auto Color Adjuster was a no-brainer for us. Keeping digital presses in line isn’t an easy thing color-wise, but we wanted to give ourselves and our customers the best shot with accurate color-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 color sample matching because the machines are consistent with Auto Color Adjuster. We’ve incorporated it into our everyday processes.”
The Auto Color 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 Color 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 Color 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 color-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 Color Adjuster, it now takes only a few minutes.
Simon offered a tip to other print shops: “Buy it. The Auto Color Adjuster simplifies the process and removes all the guesswork from calibration and print color 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 Color Adjuster and gain confidence in every color.