Dave's Top Ten Things #9

Nothing makes a printer “happier” (please note the sarcasm) than being asked to match a fabric swatch to the color of the fabric on the brochure we are printing. We generally roll our eyes and say, “we’ll do the best that we can do”. This doesn’t usually make the customer happy – they want an exact match. In an effort to explain why we cannot promise an exact match, I would like to share with you an article by Jerry Bray in his column “Pressroom Report” in the August, 2001 edition of Print and Graphics Magazine. I think he does a wonderful job of explaining the science of color theory in layman’s terms.

The visible spectrum of color runs from 400 to 700 nanometers, a measurement of light value. The human eye can perceive approximately 10 million colors in that spectrum. A commercial printing press running four–color process on coated stock can produce around 4,000 colors.

Women see color better than men. They can differentiate subtle shade and hue differences better. Sorry about that guys.

On a good day, under the best conditions, a sheet fed press can only reproduce about 25% to 30% of the color that your eyes can see. That same press can reproduce less than 50% of the colors achieved by high quality photographic processes. As we say in Maine, “you can’t get there from here.” This fact is the greatest argument against the high color detail touted in the proofing realm.

Monitors work in the RGB color space, printing presses in CMYK. Even though software applications allow you to work in CMYK, you are still only looking at an RGB reproduction of it. We have a long way to go before a monitor using RGB color can match a printing press using CMYK.

Neutrals – grays, whites and blacks – are some of the toughest colors to print consistently. When you are using CMYK to reproduce neutrals, the eye can discern even a very slight color shift of 3% or 4%. A shift in neutrals, a gray becoming pink for example, is much quicker to discern than a shift in red or blue image. This is why jewelry and dinnerware are such tough subjects to print. 5,000 K (Kelvin) lighting is the only acceptable light source for the consistent evaluation of color. Kelvin is a measure of the temperature of the light source.

5,000 K is true neutral light, equal intensities of all areas of the visible spectrum. If the viewing light is less, it will be on the yellow side. If it is higher, it will be on the blue side. Home light bulbs are around 2,800 K.

A rough rule of thumb is that only about 50% to 60% of the spot colors in the Pantone ink book can be “matched” out of process colors. Corporate colors should be run as true spot colors if at all possible. This avoids a lot of disappointment on the client end.

Printers try their best to keep their customers happy with color reproduction. We use multiple proofs and often offer press checks as a way to guarantee the color that the customer wants on the finished product. As you can see from Jerry Bray’s article, sometimes we can’t guarantee a match. We at Atkins Printing Service will always do our very best to produce color that will be satisfying to you the customer. Communication is still the best determining factor in that satisfaction. Let us work with you to find reasonable color solutions that will produce for you a quality piece at a reasonable price.

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