Objective
Maintaining consistent and high-quality printing is an essential objective for newspaper houses. It ensures the satisfaction of advertisers and readers while strengthening the publication’s reputation.
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.
- 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) |
