Packmedia Simplifies and Speeds Up Accurate Extended Color Gamut Production with Esko ArtPro+ GMG OpenColor Connector

Leading German company is first in the DACH region to use innovative GMG Connector.

The Challenge:

Simplify and accelerate extended color gamut printing while ensuring accuracy and consistency.

The Solution:

The new Esko ArtPro+ GMG OpenColor Connector.

The Benefits:

Enhanced connectivity and data exchange, uninterrupted file processing and color conversion for optimum results.

Case Study Summary

Established in 2004 in Hamburg, Germany, ABC Packmedia (Packmedia) is a spin-off of the long-established prepress company, Albert Bauer Companies. Over the course of two decades, the business has grown into one of the biggest owner-managed packaging prepress companies in Germany.

Serving brand owners and printing houses with design – from its subsidiary, Albertson Markenbande, also in Hamburg – Packmedia delivers everything from print-ready artwork and reprographics services through to flexo plate production, flexo printing, gravure and embossing for labelling and flexible packaging. The company also serves customers in the post-print corrugated sector through another of its subsidiaries, Horst Gries.

With production sites in Hamburg, Siek, Frankenberg and Warsaw, Packmedia serves a growing customer base that reaches across Europe and worldwide. With a growing number of customers embracing the possibilities of using an extended color gamut (ECG), Packmedia was the first company in the DACH region to enhance its prepress with the new tool that connects GMG OpenColor and Esko’s ArtPro+.

Learn More about ArtPro+

The connector gives us the possibility to link the native prepress editing software ArtPro+, our main repro editor, to our color management system, GMG’s profiling and color prediction solution OpenColor.

Ole Rolff – Technical Director, Packmedia

Ensuring excellence in ECG

“We serve worldwide market leaders as well as mid-sized companies, leading them through the process of packaging prepress from design to print and beyond,” said Packmedia Technical Director, Ole Rolff. “We use a complete Esko ecosystem in our prepress, with everything from ArtPro+, Automation Engine and Imaging Engine through to Studio3D, DeskPack and Dynamic Content – all connected through our WebCenter packaging management software.

“We use color management software from GMG, including OpenColor, to ensure we have good proofing results with colors other than CMYK,” he said. “Some of our customers use their own colors and so we need to make sure that our proof simulation is able to separate the colors according to existing profiles and ensure a printing result that is simply as good as possible.”

With an increasing number of customers switching to ECG – and more expected in the future – Packmedia was quick to invest in the new technology from Esko and GMG. Creating a smoother and more efficient color conversion process, the ArtPro+ GMG OpenColor Connector enhances the connectivity and data exchange between the two class-leading solutions. The integration ensures uninterrupted file processing and color conversion, without losing mission-critical metadata between systems, allowing both solutions to operate at their best.

“We tested a similar combination of repro editor and OpenColor some years ago and we were thrilled when we heard that there was going to be such a link between ArtPro+ and GMG,” said Ole. “The manual reseparation of images and artwork to match color accuracy demands can be a laborious and error-prone process. We need the connector to separate the customer files to the correct colors of an ECG, where we work with six or seven colors instead of just CMYK.”

Simpler. Faster. Better.

Ole said that incorporating the new connector into the existing Esko workflow has improved the process for Packmedia. “The process of color separation is now faster and easier,” he said.

It’s not impossible to do it in another way, but if one really wants to start to work in ECG in daily production then a link between color management software and editor is a must-have.

Ole Rolff – Technical Director, Packmedia

“We need to work as efficiently as possible to ensure we meet and surpass the expectations of our customers in terms of speed and low costs,” he said. “We have worked with Esko for many years and their solutions are integral to our prepress. While there are some competitive programs for packaging prepress out there, we are kind of married to Esko – and see no better bride anywhere else!”