It’s Friday afternoon and we are about to close up for the weekend until an email pops up in my inbox. A client has emailed me and it reads something like this:

“Hey Jamie. Thanks for the fast delivery of my sticker order. The colours have come out to a shade of green as opposed to a limey colour which it looks like on my screen.”

Being a good customer rep I get onto this right away and look at the customers file. The artwork is in JPEG format so I decide to look back on my past dialogue with the client. In it I have mentioned the issue of colour and providing a pantone reference or taking out a sample which I immediately let the client know. Also with a JPEG image altering colour output is made the more difficult.

Pantone colour matching with colour spectrometer

Checking a file on screen with RGB colour

This situation is all too familiar with digital printers as we deal with the smaller end of the market. In that segment we deal with customers who have never designed for print before or use Microsoft Word to submit their artwork. The more frustrating though are Graphic Designers who have not grasped the concept of colour management and getting accurate colour. Thankfully this is a small segment of the Graphic Design profession but a lot of time is spent on our end educating this minority.

With Colour Management we have one hard and fast rule. Provide pantone colours (PMS values) in your artwork or we take no responsibility for the colours printed as there are limitations with digital printing as well as advantages (such as lower setup costs). We also offer a production sample option to customers for a fee which they can use if they wish to see the output before they order.

Colour matching PMS colours visually

Pantone Colour Matching On Screen

Even with these safeguards in place jobs such as the above do pop up and thankfully not too regularly. One of the main replies we receive are ‘that the prints don’t look like the colours on my screen’. Our main response to this is to ask whether our customers have had their screen calibrated which is always a no. The response to this is to educate the customer about the colour range that they get on their screen and how this is affected by their brightness and contrast. Then if they load the image on another screen the colour will come out a different shade.

Another issue which arises is that a customer has a CMYK value in their artwork and has no idea why their business cards, letter heads and stickers/banners they order from us are all not consistent in colour. This is another education process as we guide them through what CMYK values actually represent. We mention that this is dependent on each printer and that each manufacturers might have slightly differing shades of CMYK. Also combine this that each material has a differing white point can also affect the way which a colour projects. To keep the customer happy we email them the closest PMS value to use on their future orders of printing.

Every now and again we also come into contact with the web designer who is trying to leverage their customer base by offering print items. They often submit their artwork in RGB format which is the norm in designing for a screen but when it comes to print can produce totally different shades of colour.

All of the issues above can be avoided if pantone colours are supplied via the Pantone Managment System (PMS). We only use PMS colours to keep a consistent colour with our digital presses as we have found this to be the most universally used. PMS books and the spectrometer we use help us keep as consistent colours as possible. There are other colour management systems available to keep colours consistent however we only utilize the pantone system.

With digital printing it is important for the client to know is that because we use 4 inks to make colours, certain colours can appear grainy. If customers want an exact match then they should go to a spot colour process. The disadvantage of this process is the higher setup costs involved. Usually by informing customers before they order and making it crystal clear will work 99% of the time, still a small percentage of customers will not understand this. So to limit this it is important to take more measures on larger orders such as including free production samples if an order is over a certain amount.

Colour matching with pantone chart

Getting the right colour on an RGB monitor