total ink coverage , TIC

total ink coverage, TIC (In French couverture d’encre totale) ink layer thickness resulting from the combined printing of all printing inks involved in the process; from the point of view of preprinting, defined as “maximum tone value sum”. In four-color printing, total ink coverage can theoretically amount to up to 4 ×100% = 400%, which would lead to unwanted delays in drying and associated printing problems, which can be avoided by using a modified ink composition process (UCR, GCR, GCC). With the help of software for saving printing ink, preset ink composition settings can be used, applying ICC ink transformations between problematic and optimized output color spaces (DeviceLink) or already preset DeviceLink profiles (basICColor DeviL and DLpack). Total ink coverage must be reduced particularly sharply in newspaper printing, because the paper used there is most absorbent.