Testimonials

Market Leader + Market Leader = the Perfect Duo

The Nussbaum Medien Publishing Group is the market leader in Baden-Württemberg, a federal state in Germany. The company has a weekly circulation of more than 1.1 million copies of official gazettes and local newspapers. 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. The high-quality, media-neutral data for different output channels (print, online publishing, etc.) not only saves a lot of time, but above all costs. Thus, process optimization throughout production and all departments is significant.

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 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 stated, "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 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 explains the path to media-neutral production at Nussbaum, "First, the newspaper printers have to straighten out. ColorLogic's CoPrA solution generated high-quality ICC and DeviceLink profiles. Therefore, we were able to improve the printing characteristics and the profiling of the newspaper printers. Furthermore, between the existing layout departments and the printing sites in 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. Comparatively, 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, “ZePrA, the top-class color server from ColorLogic, was used to carry out the final adjustment of the print data using DeviceLink profiles. Additionally, conversions to the respective printing conditions at the printing sites in Weil der Stadt and St. Leo Rot were finally carried out during the RIP process. Adjustments are still necessary, due to new paper substrates, inks, etc., in which we use CoPrA and ColorAnt."

Advantages

According to Sven van der Jagt, the advantages for Nussbaum were clear, "With the help of Mr. Bley and ColorLogic, we achieved our primary goal - media-neutral production. The entire production process was considerably simplified and streamlined."

Currently, 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. ZePrA was also used for the fully automated creation of ePapers based on the print data as well as in the editorial offices for proofing on Xerox digital presses. The software was also used in the proof conversion of data, in addition to the simulation of the paper coloring used in the newspaper and the smaller color space. Finally, all processes were 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 explained the implementation, "At both sites, we achieved a high level of interchangeability and redundancy with two press types with different printing processes. Therefore, reliability would be guaranteed in the event of a breakdown. Weil der Stadt has two KBA Cortina presses with waterless offset. The 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 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. Then adjusted this in Weil der Stadt using the ZePrA color server."

Conclusion

Sven van der Jagt sums up, "Overall, the use of ColorLogic solutions was ultimately a double win for us. It resulted in the entire production process being considerably simplified and streamlined. Together with Mr. Bley from Imagic, we managed to create a media-neutral production. We not only  created the same printing conditions at both production sites, there is also 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.