Alexandria, VA, April 19, 2007. IDEAlliance today announced that a G7 training program is being hosted by KBA in its new demonstration facility in Williston/Burlington, Vermont. The facility is the only demonstration center in North America showing a large format sheetfed press. Background During the past 3 years, the GRACoL (General Requirements and Applications for Commercial Offset Lithography) Committee of IDEAlliance developed an unambiguous description for commercial printing on a Number 1 coated sheet through a series of research press runs. In addition a new calibration and process control method, that can be employed along with good printing practices specified by ISO 12647-2 was developed. This methodology, known as G7, defines gray balance and NPDC (neutral print density curves) and utilizes these as the basis for calibration and image reproduction. G7 is not just for commercial printing but for publication printing, news printing, flexographic printing and more. This means that separations or files generated for one printing method will have a similar visual appearance if printed by another method. The G7 process has generated a great deal of excitement among print buyers because by following this methodology, we can print on virtually any type of press and on any substrate while maintaining a common visual appearance. Dianne Kennedy, VP of Publishing Technologies and GRACoL Program Manager for IDEAlliance stated, “IDEAlliance began training “G7 Experts” in early 2006. This program has been an important factor in advancing adoption of G7 across the printing industry. In the past year, we will have trained Experts from the United States, Latin America, Europe, China, Hong Kong and Australia. We are honored that such respected industry professionals participated in this training program and look forward to working closely with these consultants in the future.” Ms. Kennedy continued, “We advise printers to visit www.gracol.org/experts/ to locate an Expert who can assist them with press calibration and printing to G7.” The G7 training program consists of 3 components. First is an overview of the G7 proof-to-press process and introduction of new concepts that are central to this process such as Highlight Range (HR), the Shadow Contrast (SC) and the Neutral Print Density Curve (NPDC). Next the training focuses on using G7 to calibrate a proofing system. And finally the training will focus on using G7 to calibrate the press. This session will be taught by Don Hutcheson, the author of the G7 process and Dan Wilson, a G7 Expert from Europe who will providing insights on the methods he has developed to implement G7in the pressroom. The upcoming G7 Experts training class will be held May 3-4, 2007. Online registration can be found at www.gracol.org/events/. Jeff Collins, Color and Prepress Manager at KBA stated, “KBA is pleased to open our new facility to IDEAlliance for its G7 Experts course. We support new methods that harness the power of CTP and new press technologies to enable printers to reproduce the vision of the creative in an efficient and reliable fashion. We also look forward to extending the reach of G7 to the world of large format presses and those we feature at our new facility such as the new generation 41-inch Rapida 105, the 21-inch Genius 52 UV waterless offset press and a 29-inch Performa 74 press.