: Consistent Color Management Across Printers How do you manage a specific color, to print consistently across different printers / ICC profiles? I have a long time client and their brand color
How do you manage a specific color, to print consistently across different printers / ICC profiles?
I have a long time client and their brand color is a specific shade of coral rgb(250, 128, 112). I have a high end Epson inkjet printer in my studio, and it comes with a handful of ICC profiles for Epson's photo papers. I print short run and one-off marketing collateral for this client on my Epson printer. I would send larger volume needs to external printers, like moo.com or small local shops. Moo.com prints in GRACoL 2006 for most of their stuff.
My process usually looks like this:
Determine the intended printer, determine the intended color profile.
Set the document color profile in my Adobe application accordingly. (e.g. Adobe RGB, GRACoL 2006, SWOP, etc.)
Turn on Proof Colors and find the proof setting that matches the intended paper, or at least a close match.
Tweek the color values based on what I see in my digital proof setup
My dilemma is this: In order to achieve "optically" consistent across different printers, I'm recalibrating the colors a little bit every time based on how the colors show up in the on-screen proof. But I thought this was what proper color management is supposed to take care of automatically? Is there a better process for managing this? How do big international brands do it? Are they always using pre-mixed spot colors?
Thank you in advance!
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Color-profiling your printer will not assure color consistency that you seek.
To make sure you have at least a close approximation of it, you should ask the print house their color profile (every printing machine has different). But that seems to be to much work every time you change a printers and it still does not guarantee color accuracy.
So, to keep it simple, you may do the following:
define colors in CMYK (because they have to convert from RGB to CMYK in order to print)
if possible, define the Pantone colors, that`s the safest way (bare in mind that Pantone colors are not always reproduced properly on your printer, depending on the color gamut - to make sure, check the Pantone color chart)
ask the print house to make a color proof which you should approve before the production
attend the approval process at the print house
if you can`t attend it, make sure to send a color example (of previous production) to the print house, and ask them to match it with delta E less than 3 (that is for most colors acceptable difference)
You need to get some colour-profiling equipment and create your own ICC profiles for your printers and monitors. You cannot rely on the manufacturers' generic profiles. Look at the X-Rite i1 and the ColorMunki. A good reference book is Real World Color Management, by Fraser, Murphy & Bunting.
Commercial printers will probably want to use Pantone values for spot colours, rather than RGB values (which don't really mean anything on their own).
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