General print question

[iggee002]

Hello,

I am new here, and was hoping someone can help me. I am posting in the Adobe forum because I am working in Illustrator CS4. BTW I do not know a whole lot about print design...I was thrown into this job because I know how to use the software. I'm not complaining though. I want to do what I am doing, but I am really learning as I go. Please forgive me if I seem ignorant, is all I'm saying.

My question is this:

One of my various jobs is to design packaging for my company's products. I create the design in Illustrator (at the default print settings), and then upload it to our factory in China.

Before I upload, I print on our HP CP2500 and submit it to my boss for approval. Now, the samples are coming back, and the colors are not the same. They seem washed out compared to my sample prints here in the office.

I am designing in CMYK, and the files are almost all vector. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. I told my boss that my guess is the ink quality the Fty is using because the files were CMYK, and that should be universal...right? She told me that China needs Pantones...I said that Pantones would still have CMYK values to print...

Any advice or insight at all would be very, very welcome. I want to fix this issue...and also prevent it from happening in the future.

Thanks a lot!
Cherie

[Lukas Engqvist]

CMYK is device dependant. It is hard to know who is not printing to standard, and what is the relevant standard.

[iggee002]

Thanks for the reply

So, there is nothing I can do on my end to prevent this from happening again?

[gordo]

Thanks for the reply

So, there is nothing I can do on my end to prevent this from happening again?

You need to find a way to synchronize your color with your printer's color.

Some ideas without going too deep that may help.

Do you have samples of previous files that were printed in China so that you could compare them with how they print on your HP? If so you might be able to tweak your HP so that it better matches their presswork or adjust how your files are displayed on screen so that they better match the presswork.

Ideally they would provide you with an ICC profile that represents how they print - and you would use that profile on your HP so that it better simulates the expected presswork.

best, gordo

[tommrz]

Pantone for packaging is almost a default. Pantone colors are much more predictable. Yes, there is a CMYK "match" for every PMS color but they rarely actually "match". Also, bare in mind that something printed on your office printer will most likely look nice and shiny where as the same file printed on offset carton stock will look dull and washed out. Also, unless you do a little color management, there is no way to predict how CMYK will look when printed at the factory in China. I believe they also use different color standards in China than are used in the US.
My suggestion would be to stick with Pantone colors and invest in a Pantone guide book that shows both coated and uncoated color samples.

[gordo]

My suggestion would be to stick with Pantone colors and invest in a Pantone guide book that shows both coated and uncoated color samples.

Pantone only works if indeed the job is a spot color job. If it's a CMYK job then specifying in Pantone won't help and may make maters worse.
Specify CMYK for CMYK printing. Specify Pantone for Pantone spot color printing.
Even when specifying Pantone for spot color work - there's no guarantee that the Pantone library will be used by your Chinese printer. I've gotten (wet) proofs back from China where the Pantone Spot color numbers have been changed to names like: Bluebird soars, and Crimson sun.


best, gordo

[tommrz]

[QUOTE=iggee002;161157]
She told me that China needs Pantones...I said that Pantones would still have CMYK values to print...

I guess from the above I assumed she was thinking that even Pantone colors were printed from CMYK builds. Looks like the boss is suggesting PMS colors rather than tint builds.

[ajr]

Gordon,

Maybe all Pantone colours should have names instead of numbers. Woud make life more interesting.

A

[iggee002]

"I guess from the above I assumed she was thinking that even Pantone colors were printed from CMYK builds. Looks like the boss is suggesting PMS colors rather than tint builds."

You are right..I did think that. I thought things were printed in either RBG, CMYK, or Grayscale since those were what I set my new documents to in Illustrator and PhotoShop. All the files I submitted were in CMYK format (all my new documents for the Fty start with the default print settings in Illustrator).

[iggee002]

Thanks for the insight everyone...

I will use the color picker and find the closest Pantone when the fty directly requests Pantone colors. Otherwise, I figure the CMYK values will be enough.

I'm really thinking that my first instinct that there is not much I can do may have been the right idea. Different samples look different even though the artwork was created with the same root file. I think this may be China just doing things as cheaply as possible, and my boss understands these print design details about as much as the average Staples customer. JUST like she understood my repeated laments that I am not a print designer, lol.

Oh well...it is what it is. The bottom line is that I am getting flack, and I also like this line of work if I could quit being such a noob about it, so would like to find a way to prevent this type of stuff.

No much I can do if they are using crappy print practices...but I would like to know more about this spot color vs CMYK printing stuff, and how to know when to prepare for what.

Any good resources out there on the topic?

Thanks, Cherie