Fons Put

Abstract
Newspaper publishers today are interested in the quality of the printed pictures. Nice colorful pictures can help to attract new markets and customers. Question is what is good picture quality? In the publishing company itself there is mostly no general agreement on this topic. Different department show different opinions. This ambiguity makes it difficult for the management to take proper actions for improvement. In this research we try to develop an objective evaluation method on the perceived picture quality. This quality evaluation can than be used to keep track of the progress in the picture quality level.

Keywords: ISO 12647-3, newspaper printing, standardization, perception, quality.
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Slavtcho Bonev, Rainer Gebhardt, Stoyan Maleshliyski, Reinhold Günter, Bernhard Wirnitzer

Abstract
The realization of an effective and low-cost product protection concept is an important step in the fight against product piracy. Using high-volume offset printing, the high-density printed data storage DataGrid was applied to packaging and labels for reliable product identification and its individual fingerprint EpiCode, resulting from the physical interaction between paper and ink, was used for authentication of products. The recognition quality was estimated and improved by means of biometric evaluation methodology, the influence of different substrates (paper material and surface roughness), printing techniques (offset, digital) as well as inventions, such as ClusterCode - the printing plate fingerprint and NanoGrid - an embedded copy detection pattern, were described.

In this paper the practical aspects of anti-counterfeit print production are discussed and an overall product security concept is presented. The main advantages of this new approach are: adaptable security level, easy integration into the production chain, verification with and without access to a data base and the interoperability with existing track-and-trace solutions.

Keywords: security features, paper-and-print fingerprint, production quality control, scanning devices, overall security printing concept
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Roger Bollström, Anni Määttänen, Petri Ihalainen, Jouko Peltonen, Martti Toivakka

Abstract
The influence of using UVC irradiation as a post treatment method on pigment coated papers was studied. The germicidal wavelength (lmax = 254 nm) is known for breaking chemical bonds in organic material and has commonly been used for cleaning of surfaces. Pigment coated paper was treated under UVC irradiation and the influence on roughness, coating structure and wettability was analyzed. No change in roughness could be observed but wettability of water could be increased which indicates an increased polarity. Offset printability regarding print density, gloss, picking and ink setting was further studied as a function of different treatment parameters. In addition to changes in ink setting, a reduced picking tendency on low surface strength papers could be observed. The change in surface wetting is believed to arise from organic materials such as dispersing agents on the outermost surface being degraded by the UVC irradiation.

Keywords: UVC treatment, surface chemical properties, printability, print quality
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