If you print using flexo, you might want to check out the new Pantone Live product. It will be on display at Drupa. Better Color with PantoneLIVE - WhatTheyThink
How does this actually work? I want to believe it does but how can a RGB computer screen guarantee how a job will print on lets say uncoated stock with a matt lamination?
I had a look at the PantoneLive web pages - hmmmm. Lots of sizzle testimonials, etc, but no real information. If you can get the videos to work - one of them shows PantoneLive being used in Illustrator. The specified Pantone spot colors are replaced by spot colors specified in the cloud (PantoneLive seems to be a subscription service like Adobe CC). This allows a preview of the spot colors on different substrates. Unfortunately the video stops there so there is no explanation as to how PantoneLive would resolve the problem of matching color across the different substrates. Nothing that I could find actually showed how PantoneLive solves the issue they say that it does.
Hopefully they will clarify this at some point.
This whole idea that colours can be matched on different substrates and who knows what inks, by some independent organization, without actually testing on the target presses, has never made any sense to me. It tends to sound like a lot of the other colour management methods that try to say that one can use generic profiles and get predictable colours. Does not sound like a valid approach.
Frankly, packaging printers have always tried to match colours across different substrates etc. with different levels of success, mostly based on how much of an effort they made.
Pick a target Lab value and do the work required to hit it on any substrate, if possible. I don't think there is any big secret on how to do that.
Thus the new ISO standard 17972-1:2015.
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=61500
Just as open ICC based colour management reshaped CMYK colour reproduction from proprietary vendor CLUTs, the idea is that CxF/X-4 spectral reflectance based workflows will do the same for spot colours (at least that is the idea, it is of course early days).
Previous discussion here:
http://printplanet.com/forum/prepre...agement/15436-l-a-b-values-for-pantone-colors
http://printplanet.com/forum/prepre...837-unknown-feature-discovered-in-illustrator
Stephen Marsh
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