Mysteries
of Color Production
Today, when we print in color, we have immense resources: the finest inks ever made, all the speed and convenience of computer design, the finest presses ever constructed, the best papers, and streamlined technology such as Direct-to-Plate that cuts down immensely on printing imperfections.
And yet every day across the land rise the laments of unhappy customers: "Why isn’t the color right?!"
Before you start to panic, be assured: it is possible to get the color right ... or at least as "right" as the laws of physics and the limitations of materials will allow.
Adding and Subtracting Color
You probably don’t even remember the first time a teacher told you that red, yellow and blue were "primary" colors and showed you how to mix them to make "every other color."
And you’re probably aware that paints, inks and other pigments have their particular color because they absorb all the other colors in the spectrum. That’s why mixing pigments is called "subtractive" color mixing. Actually the true subtractive primary colors are Cyan, Yellow and Magenta, and if anybody is still teaching red-yellow-blue they should stop right away.
Because
of pigment limitations, a mix of cyan, magenta and yellow doesn’t
produce black but a muddy brown, so black is added to make up the familiar
"CMYK" of 4-color process printing.
"Additive" color mixing occurs when you mix different colors of light: The additive primaries are Red, Green and Blue (RGB).
This is how the red, green and blue phosphors in your computer monitor combine to make RGB colors. And here’s where we encounter the first barrier to getting the color "right." Compared to the colors we see in the world, the RGB color "space" is much smaller, and the CMYK space is even smaller than that. Due to such factors as the impurity of pigments and the inherent physical difference between additive and subtractive color, it’s very unlikely that the colors on your printed piece will match the colors on your monitor exactly.
Halftone, Process and Spot
Today’s printing depends heavily on a process called "halftone," in which images to be printed are transferred to the plate through a screen, producing many small dots. It’s these dots, which fool the eye into combining them, that make possible printed photographs and all the gradations of shades and colors in 4-color process printing.
There’s another way to print color, called "spot printing," where a single color is transferred to the paper without passing through a screen. In 1963, the Pantone Company set out to become the expert on color, and 40 years later they still hold that position (in the USA) with their Pantone Matching System® – the PMS swatch books that every designer uses.
The more than 1000 PMS colors are created by printers using precise combinations of 13 proprietary PMS inks. PMS spot colors are generally brighter and more exactly defined than process colors – for one thing, they don’t have to lose intensity to the screening process. And here’s another barrier: with a few exceptions, it’s virtually impossible to match a PMS color to a process color.
In 1995, Pantone ushered in the era of "hi fi color" with its Hexachrome® process, involving proprietary software, a 6-color press, and two brilliant new colors, Hexachrome orange and Hexachrome green. The most visible customer for this is Odwalla, which prints 6.2 million Hexachrome labels a month for its juice bottles, soy milk drinks, and flavor bars.
However, as Bruce MacEvoy (www.handprint.com) points out, "Even with today’s color technology and six or seven of the most modern, brilliant inks, the best printing systems can reproduce less than half the total visible range of colors." So much for "primary" colors ...
The Printing Minefield
The biggest barrier to getting the "right" color still lies ahead: the printing process itself. As we’ve seen, a CMYK or PMS print by its material nature can’t have the same colors as the RGB display on your screen, even if your monitor is precisely calibrated (which it almost certainly is not). Your laser printout will look different from the laser printout your designer sent you, and none of the above will have exactly the "same" colors as what comes off the press.
The printing process will introduce a whole new set of variables (see sidebar). The "same" color will look different on different paper stocks and weights, coated and uncoated papers, morning press runs and afternoon press runs, dry days or humid days. So what are you to do?
The key is to work with a designer who understands print production. "In our office," says Chuck Provancher, Sullivan Creative Senior Art Director, "our designers are production specialists." Somebody with knowledge and experience in production can steer you away from designs that can cause problems, and follow through on the preprint and production processes.
A few dollars spent on a high-resolution Iris print (ordered from your printing company) can give you a close approximation of what a finished offset piece will look like. If the appearance of a PMS color is critical (such as for a logo), invest in a "draw down," where the printer prints a block of the color on the stock you will be using. When budget and schedule allow, having a production specialist "on press" during the run is a useful insurance policy for any piece where quality is critical.
Color production is more of an art than a science (some would call it alchemy), and there’s no substitute for knowledge and experience. Once you understand the variables involved, you can appreciate your computer display for what it is – a rough approximation – and concentrate on the detail work down the line that will make your color job as great as you need it to be.
Controlling Printing Variables
Pam Sullivan, President and Creative Director of Sullivan Creative, and Norm Goulet, Account Executive at Ben Franklin Printers, have each had decades of experience in print production.
Pam: If you’re not using photographs, you can often get a more effective piece by using PMS colors instead of process, because the colors are so much more vibrant.
Norm: Some PMS colors are tricky. The blues in full coverage situations are the trickiest to work with. It’s just in the nature of the color. You can control it, but you can’t always eliminate it completely.
Pam: Colors are going to look different depending on the paper stock you use. The same color will look very different on coated and uncoated stock.
Norm: PMS swatch books come on coated, uncoated and matte paper, but these are generic stock. Two different kinds of coated stock can make the same PMS color look different.
Pam: We had a real struggle one time with a PMS yellow, because each side of the paper had a different finish. One side just accepted the yellow; the other was sucking it up. We had to adjust the formula until the yellows looked the "same."
Norm: Just about everybody now except for the very small shops is using direct-to-plate or direct-to-press technology – what we call Direct Imaging. We have a DI printer at Ben Franklin which has a digital front end, etches the plates digitally with laser beams and then prints with a high-end CMYK ink-based printer.
Pam: There are actually two kinds of “digital printing.” One uses printers ink and the other is toner based. The toner-based system is really just a fancy photocopier. The color can veer quite a bit over multiple copies. If you only need a few hundred copies, digital printing is a lot cheaper, but for thousands of copies, offset is cost-competitive and a lot higher quality.
Norm: If you have a fancy or complicated design, get the printer involved early. He may be able to suggest small changes that will save you a lot of headaches. And make sure to pull a proof before you run the job: you can make adjustments to get it where you want it.
Pam: If you like the way a job comes out, keep samples and have the printer hold samples as well. Then if you go back to print it again you can compare the proof with the first run, and compensate for any differences.
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