The Pantone digital chip books have been released as part of Xerox's on-going collaboration with Pantone, to ensure colours are produced precisely.

The books provide a comparison of how 1,089 Pantone Matching System colours will look when printed on a Xerox digital or offset press when using CMYK process printing.

The colours are presented in a tear-out format on coated paper, so printers can determine what the end result will look like.

The books will be available in Europe in mid-May.

Xerox has also launched phase two of its "Colour Everywhere" strategy, first embarked on four years ago, with a host of new, as yet undisclosed, products to be released as the firm aims to increase its foothold in the colour market.

Only 3% of the three trillion pages printed per year are done so on colour printers, according to the firm.

Xerox expects new technologies to increase that number to 10% by 2008, leading to a 12bn market.

Story by Andy Scott