The week 4 to 12 December was actually a 10-day week for me starting with the first of my several visits to Manesar an hour and a half South of Delhi’s airport and an hour South of Gurgaon on the road to Jaipur. I went and visited Kumar Printers on the late morning of Thursday the 4th of December for a quick recce with Sandeep Bhargava and his team at Kumar Printers for the G7 Live! Demo on 6 December. Ravikant from Sakata Inx also arrived with his ink set for the G7 demonstration runs.
Steve Smiley arrived early on the morning of 5 December and was deposited at the Hyatt Regency in Manesar and then I stopped by at home on the way to work in Noida. Later in the afternoon, I drove back to Manesar and picked up Steve for a quick walk through at Kumar Printers.
OnSunday morning the 6th of December the full force of the IppStar and Idealliance India teams arrived at Kumar Printers.We had a good showing of printers and a few brand owners and rana very bright white somewhat bluish coated stock alongwithITC’s Cyberexcel board on the Heidelberg 6- color plus coater. Of course we only ran CMYKonthe first set of uncalibrated or linear runs and thenSmiley used the Curve 3 software essentially to balance theCMY ramp (strip).The results while not exactly matching each other (with paper colors being so far apart) did come much closer and did demonstrate that the G7 method can quickly bring a pleasing result with a similar dynamic range on different stock and can be fine tuned to come within the newISO 15339 standard.Not bad,since it’s the first time Kumaris using this set of Sakata inks!
On 7 December, the G7 Master Basic Training at Habitat by Smiley. Good turnout but not as good as the demo considering it was in the heart of Delhi. The course went well although there was a wide gap in the varied experience of the participants. But overall quite good and the participants did fairly well on the test.
On 8 December we visited a couple of large companies that are interested in Idealliance India and G7 and in the evening Steve Smiley and print engineer Aniket Rane flew off to Mumbai for the Pamex Face to Face expert consultations, the Pamex Conference and the G7 Live! Master Basic Training and the demo runs at Parksons Graphics. Smiley held a two hour color management G7 F2F clinic at Pamex on the afternoon of 9 December.
On 10 December, the Pamex conference. Welcome by Tushar Dhote, one of the heroes of the past extended week. (Tushar’s past week was about at least a month long and took him to several cities across the country. He was in Kolkata a couple of nights before the show opened.) Keynote speech by Manoj Mehta of Utility Packaging – Manipal, and then a presentation by Appadurai of HP. Appadurai with the help of a couple of slick videos answered five questions that sceptics or critics of digital print generally ask. He was convincing as he promised printers with existing multicolor presses and a free press if they bought an Indigo. (His argument said approximately, that if you are currently running multiple multicolor presses and you buy an Indigo digital press, you will soon save enough to buy another press – leaving it up to you whether it would be a digital or an offset press!) Then, at the Pamex Conference came Smiley’s presentation on G7 and the ISO 15339 standard. Convincing enough so that the industry veteran and leader sitting next to me said he will send in his membership form and cheque to Idealliance India the next day (we are still waiting for this cheque). During the day we visited the Pamex exhibition and it was buzzing – a testament to Tushar Dhote’s hard work over the past few months. This is the guy who made it happen.
On 11 December the G7 Live! Master BasicTraining atthe small conference room on the ground floor of the Pamex exhibition. Ultimately 49 participantsincluding several from leading global brand owners, premedia companies and commercial print and packaging companies. Good turnout not only from Mumbai but also from Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Smiley good again. Good results on the quiz and honestfeedback.This was followed byAnimeshKejriwaltaking us to Parksonsfor a quick walk through at Parksons Graphics – theAndheri plantI visited many timesin the early 1990s as a consultantto a large international organization.
Smiley and I watched the tide going out on the early morning of 12 December at Juhu Beach and rejoiced at the clear day (after the smog of Delhi). Arriving at Parksons Graphics for The G7 Live! Demo we encounter a great turnout and a fantastic amount of meticulous organization and hospitality by our hosts. Smiley says, “Thanks for letting us inside your printing house,” as he begins his spiel explaining what we are going to do. Linear uncalibrated outputs of our test form (this time it has Indian flesh tones) on the Epson proofer; the Heidelberg 5-color plus coater and the Indigo 5600 digital press next to the space that has been cleared up to make a mini auditorium.
Then Smiley and Aniket measure the CMY strips and set up the curves for the second press runs all the while explaining or trying to explain some of the anomalies – not all curves fit easily in our crash course and demo – not all dot gains behave – and not everyone is convinced when Smiley says that dot gains are not the only criteria, “We are here to make the best visual and most repeatable and most practical print for our customers.”
The second test runs are done and results are pretty good considering we have run a new inkset on both BILT Sunshine offset paper and coated stock on the Heidelberg 74 and on the Indigo 5600. Good questions and discussion on the final evaluation and wrap-up. Good match between the two paper stocks and between the offset and the Indigo. Many of the participants are impressed by the quick match and quality of the results. Good grades on the feedback forms.
Agroup photo is printed on the Indigo for distribution to all. Smiley and Itake the flightto Delhiwherewe deliver him in time for his onward journey to Dubai and Houston.A tremendous performance by Smiley for eightstraight daysin India and about 11 straight days counting travel. He is probably justwaking up on Monday morning asIwrite this and there’s a new grandchild in the Smiley family, as well! Thanks Steve.
