Two new standards for Australian printers

The Australian printing industry will receive two new quality-based standards after the Australian standards body this week accepted two existing ISO standards for inclusion in the local market.

Of the two new standards, one is designed to bring any latent variation of colour and transparency of offset inks into line nationally, and the other is designed to standardise the quality of electronic lighting in proof and press viewing conditions.

Chairman of Australia’s TC 130/ISO AU standards committee, Luke Wooldridge (pictured), says the setting of a standard for lighting in critical viewing conditions will alleviate the burden placed on printers to expend time and resources on correcting perceived colour variations that occur under different lighting conditions.

“The colour of that light is going to affect the colour of the product,” says Wooldridge. “The print and proof can match under one condition, but not under another – without the correct lighting, it won’t match the proof. That can cost the printer money to correct a job.”

The decision by Standards Australia to accept these two ISO standards has brought the total number of local industry ISO standards to six.

Now that the standards have been added to the growing list of Australian ISO standards in the local industry, they will need to go through the local standards voting process, which could take up to two years to reach completion.

“Nothing happens fast in the world of standards,” says Wooldridge.

The complete names of the two ISO standards that will be directly adopted by Standards Australia are:

ISO 2846-1:2006 Graphic technology – Colour and transparency of printing ink sets for four-colour printing - part 1: Sheet fed and heat-set web offset lithographic printing.

ISO 3664:2009 Graphic technology and photography – viewing conditions.