Prepress

Techkon USA announces SmartAnilox

Thursday 12. February 2026 - TECHKON USA announced today a breakthrough innovation in color management. SmartAnilox builds upon traditional density adjustment recommendations such as InkCheck or BestMatch and predicts how changing the anilox roll will affect the deltaE of every color in a job. SmartAnilox will be available exclusively as part of the upcoming ChromaQA 7 release later this month.

“Our mission with ChromaQA is to eliminate pressroom guesswork. Unlike traditional tools that leave operators guessing, SmartAnilox identifies the exact anilox roll needed to achieve the lowest Delta E—slashing make-ready times and hitting color targets faster.” – Stephen Rankin, Director of Product at Techkon USA

Ink density adjustment recommendations are now standard across many software packages. In a major breakthrough development, the engineers at Techkon now have been able to extend this useful functionality to include predictive recommendations for changing and using the optimum anilox roll for the lowest deltaE results. 

Here is how it works:
• The process starts with making prints or drawdowns across the range of typically used anilox volumes 
• This needs to be completed for each ink system and substrate combination that is being used to print with 
• The SmartAnilox engine uses this information to characterize the rate of density change for a given ink system and substrate combination across a range of anilox roll cell volumes. 
• Once the initial preparation is completed, the InkCheck graph will now automatically show the predicted results for all of the anilox rolls in the system (see graphic).

SmartAnilox is just one of a number of new features to be announced in Techkon’s major new update to its color management flagship software – ChromaQA 7, later this month.