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Pinnacle Product Awards for 2022 – Honoring Industry Product Innovation and Excellence
Honoring Industry Product Innovation and Excellence
The Pinnacle Product Awards recognize products that improve or advance the printing industry with exceptional contributions in quality, capability, and productivity.
Okay, but what are these awards about? Should the public even pay attention to these awards? Aren’t the companies that receive awards just buying publicity?
In this blog, I want to show you what these awards are really about. I want to show how they are judged, why companies enter and why the public should indeed take these awards as recognition of “product innovation and excellence”!
“Companies that win awards are just buying publicity!”
Let me start by saying, no one who enters this competition is buying the awards! No one! If that were the case, some of the smaller companies would always lose and in fact many of the awards actually go to smaller companies! In addition, not every product qualifies to enter.
Here is what is required to enter, right off the competition pages:
“Eligibility
In order to be considered for a Pinnacle Product Award, the product* must meet the following criteria. It must:
- Be available for sale in the marketplace.
- Fit into one of the published competition categories.
*Products on the market more than three years will receive a deduction from the judges’ score to bring newer products into focus.”
So, this is about newer technology although established products can still compete. It’s also about products that are for sale in the market today. That makes it relevant to the public looking for the right product for their shop.
There are numerous categories as well, visit: https://productentry.printing.org/categories/ to see all the categories. In this blog, however, I’ll focus on the wide format printer categories, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check all the category winners because to qualify and then win is guided by some strict rules and measurements as well as judging from industry professionals.
“How is the competition judged?”
Again, from the award site:
“Each entry is reviewed and scored by an independent panel of judges made up of industry experts. All judges have demonstratable expertise in the evaluation of industry technology, products, and output capabilities.
We understand that conflicts of interest are a potential threat, and we take these conflicts very seriously. We do everything in our power to minimize occurrences of conflicts during the judging process.
PRINTING United Alliance does not influence the judges in any way. We select a diverse body of judges who are objective, respected, and knowledgeable in the industry. Decisions are entirely in the hands of the judges, who select and vote on the entries through an independent process.”
How are wide format printers judged?
For printing devices, judging is done by a machine, well kind of. Print manufacturers who enter the competition are required to print a standard IT8 patch of color swatches. The IT8 plus spot colors are read using a X-Rite iPro 2 and Maxwell software and the patches are recorded. Numbers are totaled and the best in each category is the winning recipient, awarding the output device that will produce the closest color to the industry standard.
Sounds simple right? it’s not! The printer manufacturer must create profiles for the media, adjust settings in the RIP software and make numerous other adjustments to produce a print that can be used in the competition. This can take numerous iterations until the manufacturer believes they have the right result to enter. Basically, the print reflects the best that the printer can do.
I might also add that even for those entries that do not receive an award, sometimes the competition can be very close in terms of results.
What does winning in a category mean?
For the winners, being awarded as the competition winner means the wide format printer has met or exceeded the industry standards for color printing output. For the consumer, it means that when choosing the winning printer, you can be assured that an independent test has confirmed that the printer is capable of printing to the highest standards.
MUTOH Wins Five Pinnacle Awards Two Years in a Row!
MUTOH has entered its printers into this contest each year for over a decade and won numerous times, however in the last two years they have won 5 awards each year. In 2022, the MUTOH printers that were awarded the Pinnacle Product Awards are shown in the image here:
ValueJet-2638X 104” Eco Solvent Printer– Roll-to-Roll Solvent/Latex (over 80 in.)
XpertJet-1642WRP 64” Dye Sublimation Printer– RTR Dye Sublimation on Textile (under $50K)
XpertJet-661UF 19”x23” UV-LED Printer– Tabletop Flatbed (Industrial/Small Item Decoration)
PeformanceJet-2508UF 4’x8’ UV-LED Printer– UV/Latex Flatbed (under $100K)
ValueJet-1638UH Mark II 64” UV-LED Hybrid Printer– UV/Latex Hybrid¹ (under $100K)
MUTOH has always taken great pride in the design and manufacturing of its made-in-Japan quality products and top-notch service. MUTOH is committed to constant innovation and leading advancements in technology.
“MUTOH is happy to accept 5 more Pinnacle awards this year for our best-in-class printers” states Brian Phipps, President, and GM of MUTOH America Inc. “We know we have great products but it’s nice to have the industry recognition with these beautiful pinnacle awards supporting us.”
Check out all the MUTOH wide format printer families at www.mutoh.com . Be sure to join us at the upcoming Printing United tradeshow in Las Vegas, NV on October 19-21, 2022 Booth C10124. Some of our color experts will be there and can give you a person demonstration of our products.
About MUTOH America Inc
MUTOH Industries, Ltd. founded in 1952 in Tokyo, Japan, celebrates over 70 years of business beginning as a manufacturer and distributor of mechanical drafting products. MUTOH America, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of wide-format printers and plotting cutters. MUTOH’s line of Eco-Solvent, UV-LED, Textile and Dye-Sublimation printers are known for their speed, quality and smart printing technologies. Whether you’re looking to print vehicle wraps, banners, signage, ADA compliant, custom apparel, fabrics, promotional items and more, MUTOH has a printer to fit your needs.
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MUTOH’s VerteLith™ RIP Software Wins Prestigious EDP Award
MUTOH’s VerteLith™ RIP Software Wins Prestigious EDP Award. VerteLith is provided fee of charge with most MUTOH wide format printers.
Read More1 More Opportunity to Join The Awesome Color Journey Webinar
Here’s a video summary of what you will learn in the vital webinar about The Color Journey. We will show you practical ways to control color from the image source all the way through to the install location! This is a must-see and it will be recorded so if you register you will get to see the replay forever!
The Webinar is Tuesday Nov 16th so this is the last opportunity to watch it live!
SECRET: We will be announcing something very special during this webinar!
Don’t worry it hasn’t happened yet but after tomorrow it will be a recording!
Nov 16th 2021
Cost $25/Person
Full access to the live webinar and watch the replay forever!
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MUTOH HAS DONE IT AGAIN! Multiple Product of the Year Awards in 2021!
MUTOH America Recognized for Excellence for 10th Year in a Row By PRINTING United Alliance
PHOENIX September 28, 2021 – MUTOH America, Inc., an industry leader in wide‐format printers, has been honored for the 10th year in a row by the PRINTING United Alliance for product excellence and quality. For 2021, MUTOH has won five Pinnacle Product Awards, which recognizes products that improve or advance the printing industry with exceptional contributions in quality, capability, and productivity. Entries are evaluated by a highly qualified panel of judges from across the printing industry in more than 58 categories including analog, digital, output, and non‐output. These honors were formerly known as Product of the Year awards.
MUTOH has proudly won five awards in the following output categories this year:
- XpertJet 1641SR 64in Eco‐Solvent Printer – Roll‐to‐Roll Solvent/Latex (under 80 in.)
- ValueJet 2638X 104 in Eco‐Solvent Printer – Roll‐to‐Roll Solvent/Latex (over 80 in.)
- XpertJet 661UF 23×19 UV/LED Flatbed Printer – Tabletop Flatbed (Industrial/Small Item Decoration)
- ValueJet 1638UH Mark II 64” Hybrid UV/LED Printer – UV/Latex Hybrid (under $100K)
- XpertJet 1682WR 64” Dye‐Sublimation Printer – Roll‐to‐Roll Dye Sublimation on Textile (under $50K)
About MUTOH
The Best Online Training Course for Wide Format Printing
In addition to award-winning printers, did you know that MUTOH also offers the best online course on just about any subject for wide-format printing? Learn to vehicle wrap, learn about color management, FlexiSIGN, Photoshop, and much more!
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HIDDEN BUTTON TO INSTANTLY FIX COLOR OF PHOTO IN PHOTOSHOP
Colin Smith
I’m going to show you a button that most people don’t even know exists, and this will fix the color in just about any photo in one click. Let me show you on a couple of examples. We’re going to do a basic photo, then I’m going to show you how I would use it on a composite.
HOW EASY IT IS TO FIX THE COLOR OF A PHOTO
So here’s a photo with an obvious color cast. I Shot this in Chicago. You might recognize the scene from the beginning of a movie if you know what it is. Let me know win the comments.
All right. So let’s do this. We’re just going to choose image. Then we’re going to go under adjustments and then we’re going to go down to match color. And this amazing button, it’s very simple. It’s right here. It’s neutralize. If I turn on the neutralize button, boom gets rid of the colorcast just like that.
SOME REALLY USEFUL OPTIONS FOR A BETTER RESULT
All right. I’ve got a couple more things I want to show you now. I would use this as an adjustment layer or as a Smart object, but it doesn’t support those options, so we will dupliacte the layer instead.
Ctrl/Cmd+J duplicates the layer
As above, choose image adjustments>match color.
Once again, we’re going to choose the neutralize option and click, OK, now we’ve applied this on a separate layer, but it gets better in the next step.
Right now the filter is affecting both the color and the luminosity. We only want to change the color.
Where it says normal in the Layer blending mode in the Layers panel, change it to Color. Notice now it’s brighter. The adjustment is only changing the color now, and not the lightness (Luminance).
And notice it doesn’t look as dark and muddy as it did before in normal mode.
MATCHING COLOR IN MULTI LAYERED COMPOSITES
Let’s use it on a composite. This pegasus is what I did during an Adobe live stream. There are lots of layers. Let’s apply it to the entire image. Now, here’s a little trick.
What you want to do is just choose the top layer, then hold down shift+option+command. That would be shift+Control+Alt on windows. While holding down these three modifiers, tap the E key, and this will create a layer on top. It’s literally creating a flattened layer of all the layers underneath.
Image adjustments>Match color> neutralize, click, OK
You can see it’s subtle on this images (every image is different), but it’s bringing everything together. And once again, we’re going to change this from normal to color blending mode.
This week was just a quick tip on that little button. I’m curious, did you guys know about that before? Let me know in the comments underneath and also let me know what you’d like to learn next.
And by the way, if you’re your new, welcome to photoshopCAFE.com. Great to have you with us. Consider joining our mailing list, and you won’t miss any tutorials from me.
And until next time, I’ll see you at the cafe.
(Ive been posting some fun Instagram and Facebook Stories lately)
Colin
PS, you can grab free goodies here, including Photoshop brushes, actions, presets, sky images, ebooks and a whole bunch more.
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WHY CHOOSE MUTOH ECO-SOLVENT OVER LATEX
COLOR GAMUT
Eco-solvent has a wider color gamut than latex that is especially noticeable in bright red, orange, magenta, blue, cyan and green output. The other significant color difference between the two ink systems is in the “glossy” quality of eco-solvent. Eco-solvent ink directly interacts with the fibers of the substrate and takes on much of the attributes of the substrate itself. Thus, when printed on glossy substrates it has a vivid, gloss appearance. In contrast, latex inks lie on top of the substrate when printed and have a matte, dull quality, even on glossy materials. In addition, latex simply doesn’t compare to the rich blacks and reflective color of eco-solvent.
With a latex system, the water-based ink is thinner and more ink must be jetted and dried to achieve the same color density as an eco-solvent ink system. Mutoh’s variable droplet technology prints in seven different droplet sizes from 4 to 20 picoliters, allowing for finer details, smoother gradations and a less “grainy” appearance when compared to the 10 pico-liter fixed droplet size of latex. Mutoh also prints at 1440dpi versus the 1200dpi for the HP Latex.
ECO–SOLVENT FOR RICHER, SMOOTHER COLOR WITH 7-DROPLET SIZES
COLOR CONSISTENCY (PRINT TO PRINT AND PRINTER TO PRINTER)
HP Latex printers use consumer-grade Thermal print heads vs. the Industrial grade print head in a Mutoh printer. Thermal heads operate at extremely high heat causing degradation of the print head over time. The result can be color shifts from print 1 through print 100 and from printer to printer.
HP recommends users replace the thermal print heads per 2-3 liters of ink (300 and 500 series) and every 5-6 liters of ink (700 & 800 series) or “frequently” due to thermal degradation or failure. The new HP 800/800W has 4 total print heads for non-white and 5 print heads with white. This means….
$125.00/print head x 4 = $500.00 in print heads per every 2-3 liters of ink used. (300,500)
$170.00/print head x 4 = $680.00 in print heads per every 5-6 liters of ink used. (700,800)
The Mutoh industrial print head is rated for 6 billion fires or 3-4 years on average but will vary depending upon maintenance and care procedures.
Because eco-solvent inks are thicker, with more pigment, they need less ink to print a specific color. They also require significantly less heat to cure and less time to print than a latex system. Latex inks require much more heat to cure, which effects the room temperature and material performance. Latex printers require (2) 220v power lines which will mean added installation expense and higher operating costs vs. the Mutoh XpertJet series of printers which only require a standard 120v power source.
LESS INK + LESS POWER = LOWER OPERATING COSTS
ECO SOLVENT VS LATEX CURING TIME COMPARISON
ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE
Mutoh XpertJet MP-41 Eco-Solvent Inks are GreenGuard Gold certified which means they are environmentally safe and can be disposed of with no special requirements. There are three levels of UL GREENGUARD Gold Certification for printing ink products based on the amount of printed material that may be installed in a room. Mutoh MP41Inks are certified at the highest level (the lowest emissions), qualified as unrestricted to wallpaper a full room.
Wallpaper – unrestricted for a full decorated room 33.4 m2 (360 ft2 ) in an office environment and 94.6 m2 (1,018 ft2 ) in a classroom environment.
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3 Image Viewers That Are Awesome and Free
These 3 Image Viewers Are More than Just Viewers
There are a lot of free image viewers out there. Image viewers basically allow you to organize and view images on your computer. But the two I’ll discuss here are among the best because not only will they organize and allow you to view images of all types, but they will also allow you to edit them and even soft proof them for printing.
Let’s take a look.
Faststone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, retouching and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touches one of the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more. It supports all major graphic formats (BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, PSD, EPS, TIFF, WMF, ICO, CUR and TGA) and popular digital camera RAW formats (CR2, CR3, CRW, NEF, NRW, PEF, RAF, RWL, MRW, ORF, SRW, X3F, ARW, SR2, SRF, RW2 and DNG).
No Adware. No Spyware. | ||
Version 7.5 | download | 2020-03-10 |
Features | |||||||||
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What I love about this image viewer is how fast it is as well as the numerous methods of editing a file. One great feature is the option of setting the Color Management System to use the monitor profile for soft printing before printing.
I’ll focus on this one because it’s my favorite.
xnView
XnView MP/Classic is a free Image Viewer to easily open and edit your photo file. The Image Viewer supports all major image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, WEBP, PSD, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, camera RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG, CR2). As Image Viewer you have features like color adjusting, image resizer, cropping, screen capture, metadata editing (IPTC, XMP) and much more. With its easy-to-use explorer-like interface, XnView MP allow you to quickly view your images and photos, but also to make image management. You have features like batch rename, batch converter, duplicate image finder, image compare, but you can also create contact sheets, slideshow.
XnConvert is a fast and powerful batch image converter, you can convert, resize, watermark, add text, enhance, filter in batch mode.
XnResize is a fast and powerful batch image resizer, you can convert, resize in batch mode.
For Desktops
Applications for Windows/MacOS/Linux, with the popular XnView Classic and now XnView MP
IRFANVIEW
It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.
IrfanView seeks to create unique, new, and interesting features, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole “creativity” is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas, and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example, XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 10+ years).
IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple (animated) GIF support. One of the first graphic viewers worldwide with Multipage TIF support. The first graphic viewer worldwide with Multiple ICO support.
Some IrfanView features:
- 32 and 64 bit version
- Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
- Multi language support
- Unicode support
- Thumbnail/preview option
- Paint option – to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
- Toolbar skins option
- Lossless JPG rotation, crop and EXIF date change (also in batch mode)
- Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
- Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
- Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
- Fast directory view (moving through directory)
- Batch conversion (with advanced image processing of all files)
- Multipage TIF editing
- File search
- Multiple undo steps
- Email option
- Multimedia player
- Print option
- Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF files
- Change color depth
- Scan (batch scan) support
- Cut/crop
- Add overlay text/image (watermark)
- IPTC editing
- Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
- Screen Capturing
- Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
- Shell Extension PlugIn
- Many hotkeys
- Many command line options
- Many PlugIns
- Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like “I Agree” or “Evaluation expired”
- No registry changes without user action/permission!
- and much much more
Click here to see several screenshots of IrfanView.
IrfanView 64-bit version
Starting with IrfanView 4.40 there is also a 64-bit version available.
Advantages of IrfanView 64-bit over 32-bit version:
- It can load VERY large files/images (image RAM size over 1.3 GB, for special users)
- Faster for very large images (25+ Megapixels, loading or image operations)
- Runs ‘only’ on a 64-bit Windows (Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10)
Advantages of IrfanView 32-bit over 64-bit version:
- Runs on a 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
- Loads all files/images for normal needs (max. RAM size is about 1.3 GB)
- Needs less disc space
- All PlugIns will work: not all PlugIns are ported (yet) to 64-bit (like OCR) and some 32-bit PlugIns must be still used in the 64-bit version, some with limitations (see the “Plugins32” folder)
- Some old 32-bit PlugIns (like RIOT and Adobe 8BF PlugIn) work only in compatilibilty mode in IrfanView-64 (only 32-bit 8BF files/effects can be used)
- Command line options for scanning (/scan etc.) work only in 32-bit (because no 64-bit TWAIN drivers)
Notes:
- You can install both versions on the same system, just use different folders. For example: install the 32-bit version in your “Program Files (x86)” folder and the 64-bit version in your “Program Files” folder (install 32-bit PlugIns to IrfanView-32 and 64-bit PlugIns to IrfanView-64, DO NOT mix the PlugIns and IrfanView bit versions)
- The program name and icon have some extra text in the 64-bit version for better distinguishing
Available 64-bit downloads
Download IrfanView-64 English (Version 4.58, Self extracting EXE file, 3.56 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 6bfdf8d92a937dde9d672b22e8864ab17fbe86a37b6cb2b4fa68e7bcb99c0861)
Download IrfanView-64 English (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 3.10 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 0c4e17336d800b1e072d8a0cb94957d673df11d1b526c6ce1f17aebc71f6dd76)
Download von IrfanView-64 Deutsch/German (Version 4.58, EXE-Installer, 3.82 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: e7fec27016e46ced330e460ea0053378502fbc264b4d9361529abc278050a9da)
Download von IrfanView-64 Deutsch/German (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 3.36 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 213621901123166619b2bea57574eae457af16248770d631c0b1bbb78d19dd09)
Download IrfanView-64 PlugIns (Version 4.58, EXE-Installer, 24.60 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: aa47dadff28084f765feb853da6dd5007be4476ceb9f6f9b41df36fa23878f26)
Download IrfanView-64 PlugIns (Version 4.58, ZIP file, 22.10 MB)
(SHA-256 checksum: 92d7c18a6113e744f75249bd7f146d0afcb27183410a5d533f29286beaf5686e)
PlugIns updated after the version 4.58:
My Recommendation
I love Faststone Imge Viewer. It’s just simple to use and easy to set up. All of these are great and your choice is more a matter of what you like, but I use Faststone.
Learn more about Color Management and Many Other Subjects
Secret Code for FlexiSIGN Users: 25offintro
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Take Control of Your Wide Format Printer – Awesome Webinar Replay #3
5-Days, 1-hr per day, a lifetime of learning!
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3 Reasons Why Color Printing is Such a Struggle
Take back control of your wide format printer. Attend our 5-day MUTOH webinar series on color printing the right way!
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Why is Printing Color So Hard! Here’s 1 Reason and an Awesome Solution!
You did the research. You saw the samples. You picked a printer. Then after the installer left, it won’t do what you want! What the %$#&!
Don’t Let Your Wide Format Printer Take Control!
It’s time to take control of your wide format printer! How? You just need to attend our week-long MUTOH webinar. Every day, for one hour for five days we will tackle the topic of wide-format color printing. We’ll look at all the issues, bitmaps, vectors, profiles, and then we’ll show you how to take back control of your printer. This is not a technical class, it a solution-driven class with real-world solutions.
MUTOH wants EVERY wide format printer owner to attend. This is not about MUTOH printers, it’s about taking back control of ANY wide format printer! Look, HP, MIMAKI, EPSON, CANON, And other users, let us make your life easier by showing you a practical way to print from design to printer and manage colors the entire way!
No more orange-red. Get Red REDS! No more Pantones that almost match get an exact match No more bitmaps or photos that just won’t pop! Print photos and images that will make your customer coming back for more and more!
Color Management Made Easy
What’s it going to take for you to attend?
How about $10? Attend each day for just $10 and even if you can’t attend one or more days or even not at all, I’ll send you all the recorded links so you can watch the webinars anytime you want!
Just use the link below to get further details! I expect you there!
PLEASE! Get the help you long for from the expert in color management with real-world solutions, not theory! Click the article below to find out more!!!! SEATING IS LIMITED so we can make this personal!
Take Control of Your Wide Format Printing! Awesome 5-Day Webinar!
Visit MUTOH.com for great printer deals!
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