Testimonials

Market Leader + Market Leader = the Perfect Duo

With a weekly circulation of more than 1.1 million copies of official gazettes and local newspapers, the Nussbaum Medien Publishing Group is the market leader in Baden-Württemberg, a federal state in Germany. Founded in 1959, the family-owned company employs around 580 people at twelve locations. In addition to official gazettes and local newspapers, Nussbaum also produces various event magazines, inserts, special prints and many other print products. There is a concentrated focus on their digital transformation with digital and mobile offerings to achieve a primary business model goal.

Goal 1: Media-neutral production 

Media-neutral production – cross media publishing – is particularly important in a company as large as Nussbaum Medien. Because high-quality, media-neutral data for different output channels (print, online publishing…) not only saves a lot of time but above all costs. Process optimization throughout production and all departments is the magic word.

The starting position

At Nussbaum Medien, all texts and images from the layout departments of the individual branches run through FotoWare’s Color Factory image optimization software. As early as 2008, FotoWare had commissioned printing expert Gerhard Bley from the Dresden-based company Imagic to optimize the use of Color Factory with the help of ICC profiles.

Sven van der Jagt, Production Manager at Nussbaum Medien states, “It was about time we optimized our image and display data for print output. The constant changing of all production parameters, i.e. paper, printing plates, inks, etc. cost us an immense amount of work and effort. Mr. Bley brought the appropriate know-how and thoroughly optimized our color management. Fortunately, the permanent readjustment of the CMYK settings (media profiles) in all branch offices and production-relevant locations eventually came to an end.”

The media-neutral solution

Gerhard Bley from Imagic explains the path to media-neutral production at Nussbaum, “First, the newspaper printers had to be straightened out. With ColorLogic’s CoPrA solution, high-quality ICC printer and DeviceLink profiles can be generated, so we were able to improve the printing characteristics and the profiling of the newspaper printers. Between the existing layout departments and the printing sites in the cities Weil der Stadt and St. Leon Rot, we were able to establish a media-neutral production with ISO Coated V2 as the CMYK exchange color space. However, even the CMYK color space ISO Coated V2 is not really media-neutral, as it is used for coated high-quality offset printing. However, compared to the significantly smaller newspaper color space – which is actually used for printing – it is very well suited as an exchange color space.”

Bley continues, “The final adjustment of the print data, i.e. the conversion of the data prepared by the branches as CMYK in ISO Coated V2, is then carried out using ZePrA, the top-class color server from ColorLogic using DeviceLink profiles. And in addition, conversions to the respective printing conditions at the printing sites in Weil der Stadt and St. Leo Rot are finally carried out during the ripping process. Due to new papers, inks, etc., adjustments are still necessary here as well, which we implement using CoPrA and ColorAnt from ColorLogic.”

According to Sven van der Jagt, the advantages for Nussbaum are clear, “With the help of Mr. Bley and ColorLogic, we have achieved our primary goal – media-neutral production. The entire production process has been considerably simplified and streamlined.”

The dynamically production-relevant process parameters are now only handled at one point (directly in the RIP process) by using DeviceLink profiles using ColorLogics solutions. The editorial contributions of the municipalities (images and PDF) and finished special prints are normalized by ZePrA and Color Factory in Enfocus Switch. In addition, ZePrA is used for the fully automated creation of ePapers based on the print data. Furthermore, ZePrA is used in the editorial offices for proofing on Xerox digital presses. The proof conversion of the data is done in ZePrA with the simulation of the paper coloring used in the newspaper and the smaller color space than ISO Coated V2. All processes are thus fully automated.

Goal 2: Two sites, one print result

The second objective at Nussbaum was to achieve a perfectly balanced printing result for the Weil der Stadt and St. Leon Rot production sites. Gerhard Bley from Imagic explains the implementation as follows, “At both sites, a high level of interchangeability and redundancy was to be achieved with two press types with different printing processes, so that reliability would be guaranteed in the event of a breakdown. Weil der Stadt has 2 KBA Cortina presses with waterless offset and St. Leon Rot has a KBA Commander CT with water-based offset. At both sites, we already had media-neutral prepress established, and everything ran under ISO Coated V2. We printed on UPM fine 80g and UPM matt 54g and 70g. These basically different printing processes had to be brought under one roof in order to achieve a uniform print result. In St. Leon Rot, we performed a DeviceLink transformation from ISO Coated V2 to the customer’s color space and adjusted this in Weil der Stadt using the ZePrA color server.

Conclusion

Sven van der Jagt sums up, “The use of ColorLogic solutions was ultimately a double win for us: the entire production process has been considerably simplified and streamlined, and together with Mr. Bley from Imagic we have managed to create a media-neutral production. Just as important for us, however, is that we have now created the same printing conditions at both production sites and have no downtime in the event of an accident.”

About ColorLogic:

ColorLogic GmbH is an award-winning, global company committed to providing the most advanced software technology in color management. In addition to ZePrA, their suite of products includes ColorAnt and CoPrA, which offer an unparalleled range of color management technology with a high level of automation possibilities. For more information, please visit our website, Twitter page or on our YouTube channel for product overviews and tips. Customers from Germany please contact Impressed GmbH regarding all your color management inquiries.