System and method for controlling color characteristics of a printed image

A system for controlling color in a printing press, said printing press including at least one printing station printing a respective color design, said at least one printing station including at least one pair of printing rollers, the system comprising:

• a color measurement unit, for measuring intensity of light reflected from or transmitted through a printed substrate at each of a plurality of spectral ranges over a selected bandwidth;
• an actuator interface, for transforming instructions to signals which operate actuators that move the rollers of said at least one printing station;
• a processor, coupled with said color measurement unit and with said actuator interface, said processor configured to determine color quality of a printed color design, to determine a required change to at least one control factor when a correction is required, and to send instructions to said actuator interface to cause the actuators to move the rollers to implement said required change, the processor configured to determine said required change by determining the at least one control factor with respective color related information that results in reference color characteristics according to a Control-factor-to-Color-Model (CfCM) within a predetermined control factors operational range defining a range of color factors outside of which a deviation may result in degradation of image quality, the CfCM stored in computer memory as at least one of:
• a look up table (LUT) and a mathematical model, said CfCM accessible to the processor and defining variations in color related information of a printed design as a function of changes in said at least one control factor, said at least one control factor includes pressure between rollers in said at least one printing station, said CfCM comprising a correlation of a plurality of control factor values to corresponding color related information, said color related information relating to a set of color characteristics or to information from which the set of color characteristics can be determined, the color characteristics including at least one of spectral reflectance values and coordinates in a color space.