What adjustments are necessary to match printing to monitor display?

[samrc]

Very nice offer indeed!

[jclements]

Advocate and others in Oregon:

John here; live in Beaverton and work in Portland.


One of the simplest methods I've used, when trying to pick a color that will print the way you hope, is shown in the above attachment. Print it out, see what looks best, use the eye-dropper tool to apply the chosen color to an object, then name the color.

Also you could create you own Xara Document of color swatches and print them on your own printer, then in the future use the printout to pick your colors and not pay to great attention to what may be displayed on your screen.

That said, I feel that it is VERY IMPORTANT, when first creating a graphic is to use NAMED COLORS or CREATE NAMED colors right off at the beginning. That way, for example, if you use use gradient color-fills or change your palette you can IMMEDIATELY change the colors used in your graphic in a matter of a few mouse clicks.

Final Note:

The company I work for has used Willamette Print and Blue Print for many years for a variety purposes (for printing engineering drawings, large color presentation posters, proposal covers, etc.) . They are very good and easy to work with, they have a variety of products/media, and their personnel doesn't change.

Their main office in N.W. Portland and if you can, go there and ask to see their products and take a tour of their place. Whether you can go there or not, make sure to call ANDY (in their "color department"), he is a customer's delight.

[jon404]

You can easily control the color for a job on any printer -- IF you know what printer the job will run on.
Do this:
1. Make a color chart, rectangles filled with different colors, with small text hex code, RGB, or Pantone notation, whatever you work with.
2. Make a PDF of the color chart, using the same PDF settings that the job will use later.
3. Output the PDF on the same press that the job will run on later. Write down the printer name/type and date on the paper output.
4. Take the printed output back and compare it to your monitor. It will look different. If you need to change colors on the computer art, use the printed PDF as your 'gold standard' and adjust the computer art to what it looks like on paper ... under normal indoor room light.

This will get you by, unless the press itself changes color settings between the time you run your PDF test and when you bring in the actual job. Try to schedule an extra day or two to always get a proof print of the job (so easy to make with digital printing) to OK before going further.

Controlling color in locally-printed jobs is simple compared to controlling color in work sent elsewhere. An ad in a magazine, for instance. All you can do is make sure you get a color check print to approve -- and, again, set your schedule to buy some extra time for a last-minute revision.

On the bright side, slight color shifts usually go un-noticed by the client. Unless it's food or fashion! Good luck!

[Advocate]

It's been a while since I've been on this forum, and I want to thank everyone for their great offers. If only I didn't live on the other side of the state! I did create several pages containing boxes of colors and noted the CMYK values for each one. It took hours to do that, but it saved time in the long run. I finally nailed the blue color I wanted for my first deck of custom cards, but must repeat the process for another deck in red (a nightmare not to make it too orange or too brown), and then green, gold, and another shade of blue. I'm going to send a PDF of my personal color charts to the printers and they can print them out, after which I'll compare what they print with what I originally printed.

As noted, this nitpicking over the color probably won't be noticed by the ultimate consumer, but I'm willing to wait as long as it takes to make sure the colors are as close to my desired goal as possible.

Thanks again everyone for the help. It's funny, when I started this project, it all seemed like such a simple task ...

[Albacore]

Save your self a lot of time if you are going to send frequent stuff to the printers and invest in a copy of Acrobat Pro or InDesign.

[Advocate]

Albacore, it won't be frequent, and I feel like once we get this first set of projects done, I'll know what to expect. But I'm going to check out the software you mentioned, right now, thanks!