PSO LWC Improved (ECI).

Lightweight coated paper is what catalogues, magazines and newspaper supplements are printed on: thin, coated just enough to hold a halftone, and chosen because postage and paper cost scale with weight. It behaves differently enough from premium coated stock to need its own characterisation, and PSO LWC Improved is ECI’s profile for the improved LWC grade in European web offset.

When you need it

If you are producing high-volume publication work in Europe and the paper spec mentions LWC, this is the profile. Typical jobs are retail catalogues, consumer magazines, inserts and direct mail where the run length justifies web offset.

Using ISO Coated v2 instead will overstate what the paper can do. LWC has a smaller gamut and a lower ink limit than premium coated, so a file separated for premium stock arrives with shadows that fill in and saturated areas that do not reach where the proof promised.

The ECI LWC family

ECI publishes several profiles across publication grades, and the names describe the paper rather than a version number:

• PSO LWC Improved for the improved LWC grade, which is the most common
• PSO LWC Standard for the standard grade, a lower specification again
• PSO MFC Paper for machine-finished coated
• PSO SNP Paper for standard newsprint
• SC Paper for supercalendered stock

Print.App ships all of these. Pick the one that matches the paper the printer has quoted, rather than the closest name.

Using it in Print.App

Attach it to the templates that run on LWC. Print.App converts through the assigned profile at PDF render time, so a catalogue template and a business card template on the same store each separate for their own paper without the customer needing to know either exists.

How Print.App uses this profile

Print.App ships this profile built in, as CMYK-eci-pso-lwc-improved. You assign it per design template in the designer, and every print file rendered from that template converts RGB to CMYK through it automatically. Nobody has to remember to do it, and your customers never see a colour setting.

The same profile drives soft proofing in the browser, so the customer approves the converted result before ordering rather than discovering it on the proof. There are 27 profiles built in, covering the ISO Coated, PSO, GRACoL, SWOP, FOGRA and Japan Color families.