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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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.

February 7, 2018

Highly Calendered Inkjet Papers – What to Know

Mary Schilling dives into the process for creating inkjet treated, coated and hybrid papers that are treated, yet perform like a coated paper. Some mills describe these as a “coated feel” paper and list them as coated, while others list them as treated (which is technically more accurate.)

December 12, 2017

Transactional Images Looking a Bit Ragged?

Traditional transaction documents are turning into “transitional” documents with more personalization, graphics and color. Unfortunately, some of those transactional images are looking a bit ragged. I’ve started counting the number

December 6, 2017

Can You Print This Pantone Color with Production Inkjet?

“Can You Print This Pantone Color with Inkjet?” This is a question we hear over and over. Not just from customers, but from customer representatives, designers and sales people. And

November 16, 2017

How Media Affects Perceived Resolution

Print manufacturers include print resolution in their machine specs. It is usually shown as dots per inch (DPI) e.g. 600 x 600 or 1200 x 1200, but you may also see different amounts for the process and cross process directions e.g. 600 x 480, particularly with high speed continuous devices.

August 28, 2017

Components of Inkjet Print Quality

What determines production inkjet print quality? This is a complex question which can’t be answered by simply looking at the published spec sheet for a device. Many OEM’s tout higher

Understanding Linearization

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Proper Packaging of Design Files

Design files can be pretty complex. A typical file could contain hundreds or thousands of detailed elements such as font families, lines, vignettes plus drawn and linked elements such as logos and photos. These may be created in multiple formats housing extremely detailed dither and color data. Designers sometimes go to painstaking detail to create a particular effect.

Understanding the TAPPI Roll Identifier

TAPPI is the technical arm of the American Pulp and Paper Association. They are an ANSI-Certified Standards development organization, and one of the standards that they have developed is the

Understanding the “Two-Sided” Effect

Have you ever completed a custom profile of your paper to only find out that when printed, one side looks darker than the other? You may notice that the ink densities are different, but may also see a visual color and perhaps a mottle, line and text clarity difference.

Diagnosing Cross-Process Density Shifts

If you see any signs of cross-process density shift, get a baseline by running a diagnostic test pattern on a high holdout inkjet coated sheet.

February 22, 2017

Stripes, Solids and Banding – Cross-Process Density

Stripes can be a wonderful design element, but when we see stripes when printing solids, we might call that “banding.” In inkjet terminology, it is more correctly referred to as “cross-process density shift” which is a bit of a mouthful.

February 16, 2017

Working with Thin Papers

Thin papers require more thought than their thicker kin because thin papers have much less fiber content.

February 14, 2017

Working with Thick Papers

Thick papers can take on more ink volume and heat than their lighter weight brothers.

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