Specification

 Since 2002 when GRACoL 6 was published, the GRACoL Committee has undergone a complete overhaul in both its leadership and its direction. While GRACoL still strives to provide a valuable resource to the commercial printing community, we needed to take a hard look at both the “status quo” of the guidelines and specifications in light of the requirements from print buyers and creatives.

In 2004, after the publication and dismissal of our effort known as DTR 004, the GRACoL Committee regrouped. Today’s chairs together represent color management expertise, expertise in scanning and digital photography, the point of view of a printer, and representation from an agency.  Input from the online grassroots printing community known as Printing Across Borders provided us with a critical new international perspectives as well.

 In 2007, GRACoL 7 or GRACoL 2007 was published.  This specification presented new aims for commercial printing to replace DTR 004. In addition a re-examination of the process controls for printing enabled the GRACoL Working Group to introduce new process controls based on gray balance and a neutral tone scale that would assure a closer visual match between the vision of the creative and the finished product on press. This process, known now as G7, stands on its own but is also a foundation of the GRACoL 7 Specification.

Today the GRACoL Working Group looks forward to the publication of GRACoL 2009. This specification will build upon GRACoL 2007 and extend it by providing new characterization data sets and new best practices to support the sheetfed offset printing community.