GRACoL Develops the 1st Certified Specification for Commercial Printing in North America

April 30, 2003 - Alexandria, Va - Many years of hard work and frustration by a group of color evangelists who affiliated themselves with General requirements for Application in Commercial offset Lithography (GRACoL®) under the belief that the development of standards would lead to higher quality in commercial lithography has finally come to fruition. It is with great jubilation and awe that co-chairs Leigh Kimmelman and Roy Zucca announced to GRACoL committee that the color characterization of GRACoL® has been defined and accepted in principle by CGATS to be eventually presented as Technical Report 004 (TR004). TR004 will define the center point of commercial printing, providing prepress aim points, and represents a huge advance for quality standards. The full draft of the document will not be available for a few more weeks as final wording is completed, but David Hultin, Director, Print Intiatives at IDEAlliance said "I wanted to make the membership of IDEAllinace aware of the success of this effort because this is an important step for North American commercial printing, and clearly shows the value we present to our members."

GRACoL® ran two certified press runs, the first at LAgraphico in Burbank California in July of 2001. To ascertain the validity of that data, a second run was performed at Integrity Graphics in Windsor, Connecticut, in December 2002, the 2nd run supporting the data of the first. The data was measured and analyzed and will define GRACoL® as the center point for commercial printing. "I can hear it throughout the press rooms: "We print to GRACoL®. TR004", added Hultin, "This does for commercial printing what SWOP did for publications printing: makes the highest level of quality achievable and repeatable."

Special thanks for outstanding commitment and perseverance go to Larry Warter/Fuji, George Leyda/ColorInfo Technology, Jim Brisendine/PBM Graphics, John Finnical/DuPont, Gerry Gerlach/Integrity Graphics, Bill Jacot/LAgraphico, Victor La Valla/Integrity Graphics, Dick Presley/Kodak Polychrome Graphics, Gordon Pritchard/Creo, Mike Rodriquez/RR Donnelley, Al Shapiro/LAgraphico, Miles Southworth/RIT, and Larry Steele/RGB Metrology. These people made this happen.

About IDEAlliance

IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) is a not-for-profit membership organization. Its mission is to advance user-driven, cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes by developing standards, fostering business alliances, and identifying best practices. IDEAlliance has been a leader in information technology since 1966 (founded as Graphic Communications Association) having fostered the development and adoption of standards such as ADIS, GRACoL, ICE, JIFFI, Mail.dat, papiNet, PRISM, PROSE XML, SPACE XML, SGML, and XML. Learn more about IDEAlliance at www.idealliance.org.

Contact

David Hultin
703.837.1083
dhultin@idealliance.org