Influence of paper and printing process on the visual perception and colorimetric characteristics of newsprint

There is increasingly intense media and revenue competition for the newspaper industry. Adding value to newsprint by improved substrate or printing process is seen as a way of attracting higher revenues or achieving product differentiation. VAPoN is a Print City sponsored cross industry project evaluating the Value Added Printing of Newspapers. A bespoke eight-page sample was printed on five different newsprint substrates with a combination of cold and heat set inks. These was assessed visually and the results compared with quantitative colorimetric measurements obtained sphectrophotometrically and using bespoke software to obtain the gamut from scanned images. A direct correlation was found between the value added and both the chroma of individual colours and colour gamut of the printed product. This relationship will allow the direct assessment of the fiscal benefit of using improved newsprint substrates and heat set offset printing compared with traditional newsprint.