Inkjet Printing: Get it done with Adobe

The rapidly evolving inkjet printing segment is growing in value, and competition is rising as more print service providers look to profit on its recent success. This segment has flourished and production capacities have expanded with the implementation of both low-volume multi-pass and high- speed single-pass printers.

Inkjet was undoubtedly a disruptive technology when it broke into the textile printing arena in the 2000s, but it was far from the complete solution we see today. Initial adoption was slow as print speeds struggled to compete with analogue printing processes. High device costs and printer reliability limited technology adoption primarily to printing samples.

Lots of research and development (R&D) has been carried out to enhance the three key components of digital textile printing: the press, print heads, and inks. Integrating these three elements is essential to achieving high-quality output. Adobe PDF Print Engine (raster image processor software) is the key to enabling that integration.

Unlock next-level color management and more

Super high-speed printing became reality for the digital textile market which broke down a critical barrier to adoption. The fashion industry can be a very profitable market for print service providers, but most inkjet machines were not capable of printing the volumes required for fast fashion. The PDF Print Engine is the fastest rendering technology for rich graphics: rendering algorithms are continually optimized to ensure the fastest output times for complex effects created by the latest features in Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

Take color management, a problem that has been plaguing the inkjet textile printing industry for too long despite the availability of spectrophotometers. With brand and consumer demands increasing, right-first-time production is critical; to this day, print service providers are losing revenue because of their failure to efficiently manage color which is wasting valuable resources.

Traditional color management techniques need to be blended with sophisticated color emulations to ensure colors are accurately and consistently reproduced across multiple fabric types - irrespective of the ink being used. Driving a textile press with the Adobe PDF Print Engine enables print service providers to print exactly what the designer creates and views on screen.

PDF Print Engine incorporates the Adobe Color Engine, but it can also be integrated with 3rd-party proprietary color management modules (CMM). Job elements profiled with any combination of color spaces can be converted to the intended print condition, according to the output profile.

PDF Print Engine supports the latest PDF color capabilities such as black point compensation (BPC), spectral data for spot colors, and page-level output intent. Continuous shades are rendered smoothly, regardless of length. Color planes for images and graphics containing any bit- depth up to 16 bits per channel to render subtle color shifts and achieve absolute color precision.