Alexandria, VA – The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the world’s leading standards-making organization, has announced that TC130 (Graphic technology) has approved ISO 15339 as a Publicly Available Specification (PAS). The primary input to, and leadership of, this project has come from US experts in ISO TC130 including many members of IDEAlliance. Idealliance President & CEO, David J. Steinhardt, responded, “I’d like to thank industry leaders David McDowell, Ray Cheydleur, and Steve Smiley, as well as many others from Idealliance, CGATS, USTAG, and support from around the globe. This has been a tireless effort over more than 15-years to accomplish this ground-breaking work.”

Approved are ISO/PAS 15339 Graphic technology — Printing from digital data across multiple technologies — Part 1: Principles and Graphic technology — Printing from digital data across multiple technologies — Part 2: Characterized reference printing conditions, CRPC1 – CRPC7 which are technically identical to CGATS 21 parts 1 and 2. These series of documents will now be easily and freely accessible worldwide.

Ray Cheydleur, USTAG and CGATS Chair, and recent Vice Chair, Idealliance Print Properties and Colorimetric Council, responded, “This vote shows that much of the greater graphic communications community recognizes the impact that this series of documents can have on the quality and workflow of printer’s worldwide.”

The basis of ISO/PAS 15339 are registered characterization data sets, used for the creation of profiles for specific printing processes. As early as 1995, the ANSI/CGATS TR001 dataset was used as the aim for SWOP^® printing and defined the expected printing results for web offset publication printing. Over the years, other datasets followed, which eventually led to the publishing of an organized family of datasets, CGATS.21. Based on a common pre-defined criteria containing seven characterization data sets, CGATS.21 covers the range of printing from newsprint to GRACoL,^® through a very large gamut. Although these same data sets were introduced into ISO before they were standardized in ANSI, it was only until now that they were finally approved as ISO Publicly Available Specifications (PAS), 15339-1 and 15339-2.

The CGATS.21 family of datasets can be accessed here. ISO Publicly Available Specifications (PAS), 15339-1 and 15339-2 will be posted to the Idealliance website when available. For questions, please contact Debbie Orf, NPES, [email protected] (703.264.7229).