Evaluation and Controlling Influence of Papers Containing Optical Brightening Agents (OBA) for Color Management

摘要

Color management has been applied in the printing industry since 1993. Press papers as one of traditional substrates, its properties impact the quality of color reproductions. At present, almost all kinds of papers contain OBA. OBA works by absorbing ultraviolet wavelengths of the illuminant, emitting fluorescence at blue wavelengths, increasing the amount of light, and making the paper brighter. This effect of OBA is difficult to measure with common spectrophotometers accurately, which creates a mismatch between color proofing and printing. Furthermore, both the printing standards, as ISO 12647-2 defined substrate without fluorescence. It results in some problems in printing conformance using paper with OBA. This research discovered influence of OBA to color samples, derived colorimetric conversion method to correct and compensate the effects of OBA in papers, and demonstrated the efficient of the colorimetric conversion method in color management workflow with soft proofing.