Articles By Mary Schilling

Mary Schilling writes about technical inkjet industry articles, provides RIP and workflow training, manages print quality analysis evaluation, ink management and color management for OEM’s and end users for pre and post machine installs. Mary Schilling consults with paper mills, fluid and inkjet machinery suppliers on how to improve color and print quality for high speed and industrial inkjet involving paper, plastics, metal, fabric and glass with UV and aqueous inkjet fluids. This experience led her to receive Innovator of the Year awards from the Flexographic Technical Association and from Xplor International for her efforts in closing the gap between inkjet printing for document, and digital corrugated packaging. She is the owner of Schilling Inkjet Consulting, Published Author and Certified ColorGate Color Trainer and Distributor. Her latest published works can be found www.thinkforum.com/bookstore

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Shift Happens… Visual Expectations

Shift can happen anywhere in the printing process, but if the process is set up with visual expectations which can’t possibly be matched, the process is set up for disappointment. Here’s how to help internal and external designers create files with a better understanding of Machine, Ink and Media or MIM.

Using Your Inkjet Press for Finished Samples

Inkjet is still new to the masses and its differences are easier to “see” than verbally explain. Seems crazy, but this is why we use these multi-million dollar print workflows for one or two finished proofs.

February 26, 2019

Paper Partners Meet in the Mountains

At Hunkeler Innovation Days, media developers Arctic Paper, Crown Van Gelder (CVG), Drewsen, Mitsubish and Mondi gathered to showcase their array of media products compatible with inkjet printers and finishing.

Featured image for “Preparing Your Brain for Inkjet”

February 12, 2019

Preparing Your Brain for Inkjet

Regardless of whether you are new to production inkjet or trying to work through production challenges, success often comes with a well-rounded approach that includes filling knowledge gaps and executing critical process steps.

January 22, 2019

Shift Happens… Understanding Aqueous Ink Chemistry

Welcome to the latest post in the “Shift Happens” series. In this post, we will focus on aqueous ink chemistry and factors affecting color shift. Knowing the type of ink and understanding its chemistry is just as important as understanding how it reacts to your surface conditions. Find out why.

January 11, 2019

Closure of a GP Paper Mill

Another blow for the publishing marketannounced by Georgia Pacific. GP is closing the communications paper division of its Port Hudson facility, as well as the wood yard, pulp mill and energy complex that support it.

November 27, 2018

Inkjet Needs Maintenance Too

Like all mechanical printing technologies, inkjet requires maintenance. We often forget that ink and dust build up that happens with conventional printing and toner units can also impact inkjet equipment.

November 26, 2018

Shift Happens… Know Your Workflow

Inkjet is data driven. Understanding design to RIP process and documenting is important when it comes to color alignment in your workflow.

November 19, 2018

Shift Happens… So Measure

Color shifts can happen, and when it does, it may become unacceptable and even embarrassing when they are visually obvious. For our first segment of our Color Shift Happens series, we will discuss why it is important to add industry proven methods to evaluate color.

November 15, 2018

Shift Happens

Have you ever received a pdf file which called for bright red or a blue shade, but didn’t print correctly with colors visually different from what the customer was targeting? Shift can happen from paper to paper or from device to device. It can even happen to the same color printed in different areas on the same page in certain conditions. Color shift is any change which is unexpected and doesn’t meet customer expectations.

November 7, 2018

Appvion Announces Price Increase

Better order your paper now, another price increase is just in time for the holidays.

October 31, 2018

Rich Black in Images Shouldn’t Be Scary

Producing quality rich blacks and image details with inkjet can become a scary task. Learn how to control black details (shadows) by understanding the ink/paper/profile combinations that are spooking your results. Happy Halloween.

August 21, 2018

Conventional Offset – Is it time for Inkjet?

Mary Schilling discusses the opportunity for sheet-fed inkjet including the traditional barriers of paper, pricing and image quality. The analysis discusses the requirements for inkjet to compete with commercial offset printing.

Color Vision Deficiencies

Knowing he color capabilities of your inkjet device is very important, but understanding the color capabilities of your press crew is critical. Visually tweaking or modifying color on press is never an efficient or repeatable way to run production. Making your staff aware of their potential vision deficiencies will help catch color, as well as print quality issues, before they get to your customer. Here are some things you should know.

Featured image for “Pigment Ink and Creme Brûlée”

Pigment Ink and Creme Brûlée

As inkjet moves into applications with high ink coverage and quality demands, users can run into some hard to diagnose problems. If you only focus on the paper and the print heads when trying to diagnose print quality issues, you could struggle for a long time looking in the wrong places.

Understanding Paper Specifications-Shade

Shade is important to inkjet color reproduction as the paper’s shade shows through the ink and can shift the ink’s colorant when applied to the sheet. Paper shade can affect all values of highlight, mid-tone and shadow areas of print.

Understanding Paper Specifications-Whiteness

Paper whiteness is particularly important in markets for which small text and readability is important such as book as well as magazine. For magazine images, the level of OBA’s in the paper can affect color reproduction accuracy of certain colors combinations.

Understanding Paper Specifications-Brightness

Characteristics like brightness, whiteness and shade level of the paper can impact the inkjet color outcomes for your project. Lets talk about how some of the manufactured paper specifications and how brightness can directly affect your color fidelity.

Objective Ink Measures – Chroma

In this installment of “Let Data Drive your Print Quality Comparisons” Mary Schilling discusses the importance of chroma, how it’s defined within the context of print quality analysis and differences between inkjet and offset.

Objective Inkjet Measures – Optical Density

This the first in a series of articles by Mary Schilling that will drill down on specific print quality metrics, what they mean, how they are measured and what factors in your printing process can affect them. Optical Density is one of the important quality metrics that can be objectively measured and it can be correlated to a number of other quality metrics.

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