PSO Uncoated ISO12647 (ECI).

Uncoated paper is not coated paper with the gloss turned down. It absorbs ink, spreads dots substantially, and produces a visibly smaller gamut. PSO Uncoated ISO12647 is the European Color Initiative’s characterisation of that process, built on FOGRA47L, and it is what European uncoated offset should be separated for.

Why you cannot just reuse the coated profile

This is the single most common colour mistake in small print shops. Separating an uncoated job through ISO Coated v2 gives you artwork that looked correct on screen and comes back from the press dark, muddy and flat, with the shadows filled in.

The reasons are mechanical:

• Dot gain is far higher. Ink spreads into uncoated fibre in a way it does not on a sealed coated surface, so mid-tones print heavier than the file suggests.
• The ink limit is lower, at 300%. There is less headroom before the sheet stops coping.
• The achievable gamut is genuinely smaller. Saturated colours that are reachable on coated stock simply are not reachable here, and no amount of profile choice changes that.

Converting through the correct profile does not make uncoated print like coated. It makes the on-screen proof honest about what uncoated will actually do, which is the point.

v2 and v3

PSO Uncoated v3 exists, based on the newer FOGRA52 characterisation and reflecting today’s optically brightened uncoated papers. Print.App currently ships the ISO12647 (FOGRA47) version. If your printer has specified v3 by name, ask them before substituting, because the difference is largest exactly where uncoated work is most fragile.

Using it in Print.App

Attach it to the templates that print on uncoated stock: letterheads, compliment slips, uncoated business cards, anything on recycled or bulky offset. Print.App applies the assigned profile at render time and soft proofs it in the browser, so the customer sees the muted result before ordering rather than after.

How Print.App uses this profile

Print.App ships this profile built in, as CMYK-eci-pso-uncoated-iso12647. 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.