Revolutionize Color Management with Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster (RACA)

RACA is going to transform the way you handle your color management, and you’ll probably come to think of it as an indispensable tool for your print operation. 

What is the process your team uses for color management?  You probably think of color management as a tedious, often tricky, iterative, manual process. 

At Printing United 2024, Ricoh highlighted a game-changing solution to this problem—the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster (RACA).  For most print shop/center managers, achieving consistent and accurate and color reproduction can be frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive.  Thankfully, RACA makes things easier, faster, and far more reliable, no matter how many manufacturers and models of color printers you use. 

This article pulls together what we learned at Printing United 2024 and a follow-up discussion with Toby Saalfeld, U.S. Director of Color Management at Ricoh Americas Corporation.  

The process to achieve predictable and consistent color as you know is not fun.  In most cases, color management requires tedious manual adjustments that can eat up valuable time.  Here’s what the traditional method usually looks like: 

1. Print the Color Patch Sets: You have to print the unique color patch sets for each printer you want to calibrate.  
2. Manually Scanning Each Patch: After printing those patches, you have to manually scan each page line by line.  If that sounds laborious, it’s because it is. 
3. Hours of Work: For multiple color production devices, this can consume a significant amount of time—time that could be better spent on more productive tasks. 

The manual nature of this process also opens the door to several challenges: 

• Human Error: Relying on manual scanning can lead to inconsistencies, and errors are all too common. 
• Commitment: You have to dedicate time to this process that doesn’t directly contribute to producing output or revenue. 
• Specialized Expertise Needed: Not everyone on your team can handle color management, making it harder to keep things running smoothly. 

The uniqueness of RACA is its ease of use. There's no learning curve, essentially, making it possible to easily train a novice to use it — and the quality it creates is at the level of any other solution on the market. 
— Toby Saalfeld, U.S. Director of Color Management at Ricoh Americas  

Imagine eliminating all the manual hassles with color management and profiling your color output devices.  That’s precisely what we saw at Printing United 2024, with the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster (RACA).  

So, how does this work? Let’s walk through the new process: 

1. Print the Color Patch Charts: Just like before, you still need to print these charts for each printer.  However, following this step is where the efficiency starts to kick in. 
2. Automated Scanning: Instead of manually scanning each patch, you load the patch charts from all the color output devices into the feed tray, press a button, and let RACA handle the rest. 
3. Brand & Device Agnostic: One of RACA’s standout features is that it doesn’t lock you into using just Ricoh color devices.  You can achieve consistent results across any color printer manufacturer in your fleet, making it brand -neutral and device-neutral. 

When you switch to RACA, here’s what you gain: 

• Time Efficiency: The manual process that may take hours can now be done in minutes. 
• Ease of Use: Don’t worry if you’re not a color management expert.  RACA’s user-friendly setup means anyone can handle it, from new team members to seasoned professionals. 
• Consistent Results: Achieving accurate and predictable color across your color output devices is no longer a headache.  With RACA, your four color output will be consistent across manufacturers and models . 
• Cost Savings: By eliminating errors, you’ll see savings in time, waste, and customer satisfaction. 

By automating the color management process, you can increase productivity and ensure that your branding stays sharp, professional, and reliable across all printed materials. 

One of the key strengths of RACA is its ability to create output profiles tailored to your specific printer(s) and paper types.  In the past, different paper stocks would often produce varying color outputs, even when printed on the same machine.  This inconsistency causes headaches for businesses that rely on brand accuracy and color fidelity. 

With RACA, this process is simplified and standardized.  Once you print your patch charts on your specific paper(s) RACA creates a custom output profile that ensures consistent color reproduction for that paper.  And the best part?  It’s all done in minutes instead of spending a significant amount of time on the manual process of profiling all your paper types.  RACA allows you to achieve excellent color output in a fraction of the time. 

Whether you’re using six, 10 or 20 different paper types across multiple printers/OEMs, RACA makes sure the output is consistent across the board. This eliminates the need for time-consuming adjustments, giving you back time to focus on what matters most—producing high-quality prints for your clients. 

One of the most impressive aspects of the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster (RACA) is its color sample matching capability, which sets it apart from other color management solutions in the market.  If you’ve ever had a customer request an exact color match from a previous print run, you know how challenging that can be. The typical process involves trial and error, sometimes wasting valuable time, resources, and materials as you attempt to achieve the perfect match. 

RACA simplifies this process in ways that no other system can.  It allows you to take a physical print sample (Ricoh refers to it as the Golden Sample) —whether it’s a past job or a customer-supplied reference—scan it into the system, and automatically generate a custom output profile that adjusts your printer to match that sample.  No more guesswork and no trial and error. 

Here’s how RACA’s color sample matching makes your life easier: 

1. Input the Sample: Whether you’re working with a previous print or a customer sample, simply load the physical print into RACA. 
2. Spectral Analysis: RACA uses spectral analysis, breaking down the colors into their individual components to get an accurate reading of the sample’s color values. 
3. Match to Current Print: Print a new sample of the current job without any color adjustments and feed that into RACA. 
4. Automatic Profile Creation: RACA compares the two samples—your target vs.the current print—and creates a new profile that adjusts the colors to match.

In the past, if your business had to match an older print job exactly, you c spend hours tinkering with settings, adjusting magenta levels here, or bumping up the yellow there—often with frustrating results.  RACA eliminates that pain.  As soon as the profiles are created, you can trust that your new print run will match the sample, saving you valuable time and giving your clients the consistent, reliable results they expect. 

Many traditional color management systems use camera-based technology to scan and read colors.  While fast, this method is often imprecise because cameras rely on basic RGB values (red, green, blue) to estimate colors. This leads to inaccuracies, especially when trying to reproduce highly specific colors or match older print jobs. 

RACA takes a different approach by using spectral analysis, which breaks down each color into its component wavelengths.  This provides a far more accurate reading of the color values, ensuring that your printer can reproduce even the most subtle shades and variations. 

By using spectrophotometer-based measurements instead of camera-based readings, RACA achieves results that are not only faster but also more accurate. This means you can match customer samples with a level of precision that other systems simply can’t offer.  For businesses where brand color accuracy is critical, this feature is indispensable. 

Another standout feature of RACA is its ease of use. Whether you’re a seasoned color expert or completely new to color management, you can easily operate RACA without the need for specialized training.  This is particularly valuable in today’s print industry, where many companies are experiencing a shortage of color management specialists. 

As Toby Saalfeld points out, many experienced color management professionals are retiring, and there’s a gap in the workforce when it comes to new talent entering the field.  This means fewer people available who understand the nuances of color management and profiling, leaving print shops to either train less experienced staff or outsource the work entirely. 

RACA addresses this issue by drastically reducing the learning curve.  

With its intuitive interface, even novice operators can calibrate printers and create accurate output profiles without needing a deep understanding of color management principles.  This allows your team to handle color adjustments quickly and confidently, without having to hire additional specialized staff or rely on outsourcing.  

In traditional color management, getting everything right can take hours.  Between printing patch sets, scanning them manually, and adjusting printer settings, this time-consuming and costly process can consume entire workdays. 

With RACA, those time-consuming processes are streamlined into minutes.   According to Saalfeld, RACA can cut the time spent on color calibration by up to 95%.  This means instead of dedicating hours to adjusting colors, you’ll be done in minutes, and the time saved isn’t just about efficiency—it also means less downtime for your printers, allowing you to take on more print jobs and boost your overall productivity. 

By saving time, materials, and labor, RACA delivers both short-term and long-term value for your business.  Whether you’re running a large print operation or a smaller shop, these efficiencies add up, helping you meet tight deadlines, reduce waste, and ensure consistent quality in every job you take on. 

If you’re still on the fence about whether RACA is the right fit for your business, consider the long-term benefits it brings to your color management strategy.  RACA doesn’t just save you time today; it transforms your print operations for years to come.  

Here’s why: 

• Consistency Is Key: In the world of printing, maintaining consistent color output across multiple devices isn’t just a “nice-to-have”—it’s a necessity.  Your brand’s identity, customer satisfaction, and the overall quality of your work depend on it.  RACA ensures that whether you’re working with digital, wide format, or offset devices, your colors remain consistent across the board. 

• Ease of Use for Novice Users: As discussed earlier, RACA’s intuitive design allows anyone to handle color management, from the most experienced operator to someone completely new to the industry.  This means you don’t need to rely on a color management specialist, and your business isn’t held hostage by staffing gaps or expertise shortages. 

• Scalability for Growing Businesses: Whether your business is small and just starting to expand or you’re already managing a large print fleet, RACA grows with you.  It’s capable of handling a wide variety of devices, paper types, and workflows, ensuring that as your business scales, your color management stays streamlined and efficient. 

As we look ahead to the future of color management, it’s clear that the traditional, manual methods of the past are no longer viable for businesses that want to remain competitive.  RACA is leading the charge in transforming how color calibration is handled, making the process faster, easier, and more accessible to everyone. 

RACA’s powerful features—automated color profiling, color sample matching, and device-agnostic capabilities make it a must-have tool for any print operation looking to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver consistent, high-quality results every time. 

Are your high-quality color printers ready for the future?  

Reach out to us for an assessment of your print fleet.