Best in Print 2025

General Print Quality (GPQ) assesment on random market copies

Objective

WAN-IFRA offers neutral and unbiased print quality assessment on random market copies that helps publications benchmark the quality scores, enabling publications to evaluate quality against competitors in the market. This approach helps newspapers identify areas for improvement and maintain excellence in print quality.

Quality assessment methodology:

GPQ Benchmarking: Quality evaluation on random market copies (self & competitor), collected random by WAN-IFRA.
Criteria:
- 16–20 color pages evaluated based on common pages. Two copies per test day/month evaluated. Can be customise to suit the company requirement. Final score benchmarked against % defects.
- A cuboid not evaluated for technical criteria, only visual print quality is assessed
- Copies collected randomly from newsmarts and markets in the city of publication.
Confidentiality: Strict confidentiality maintained; reports not for publicity or litigation.

Defect Categories and Parameters

Defect Category	S.No	Defect Parameter
Print Process	1	Poor lateral register, poor ribbon register
	2	Over or under inking, density variation
Print Quality	3	Show-through, Strike-through, Print-through
	4	Disturbing set-off
	5	Impressions from draw rollers, path rollers
	6	Dirt stains, fingerprint marks
	7	Printing plate edges
	8	Printing plate scratches
	9	Disturbing mis-register
	10	Disturbing toning and Summing
	11	Paper wrinkles / Creasing
	12	Hickeys / Picking (Fluff accumulation)
	13	Pin holes in image area
	14	Slur / Doubling
Image and Graphic Quality	15	Deficient sharpness, low resolution, moiré
	16	Color cast
	17	Deficient contrast, brightness
	18	Deficient tone reproduction (Flat, missing Highlight / shadow)

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