Printing should not feel like gambling, yet colour matching in decorative print and textile printing often turns into endless trial runs, wasted substrate and stressed teams. We’re joined by Duncan Ross, Managing Director at AVA CADCAM, to talk about what actually makes colour predictable across a modern digital print workflow, from design creation to RIP to pressroom control.
We get practical about how AVA’s CAD and CAM approach helps teams take artwork from tools like Photoshop and make it genuinely fit to print: correct repeats and scale, smarter colourways, and early warnings for out-of-gamut areas and overprints that will fail later on the printer. Duncan also shares what he sees in the market right now, why cost saving has become a top priority, and how tighter colour management can reduce the number of attempts it takes to match a customer target, unlocking real productivity gains.
Digital versus analogue is not framed as a battle. We explore how décor manufacturers can test and develop designs on industrial inkjet, then keep them transferable to analogue presses for volume by working within a common colour space and controlling variables. We also cover collaboration with printer manufacturers and workflow partners, plus the sustainability upside of reducing blind sampling, wasted energy and unnecessary shipping of inaccurate approvals.
