Pantone Color Bridge / UNCOATED

[jcallison]

We use plate curves to control gain on coated and uncoated paper and this works well for us. We target our gain numbers to gracol numbers and can make our uncoated sheets look very similar to the coated sheets--as best that an uncoated sheet can. Our problem is with the high target gain values used in the Pantone UNcoated process books (color bridge and DS.) If I set our uncoated gains to mimic these values so that we match the builds, images are way too full and dark. We have more luck using the coated build values on uncoated stock. Has anyone else run into this? Customers do not like to hear that there could be something wrong with their Pantone book.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

The idea of using curves though it sounds attractive does have some serious problems. For one thing the appearance of primaries and secondaries is different. If you take the pantone solid as an example you will see that the same ink from the same bucket produces different visual colour. I think you are asking for the impossible. You would need curves that vary depending on the mix of colours, which is exactly what colour management is for. If there was a simpler way then all that effort but into ICC and Devicelinking would just be a waste, but it's not.

 

[jcallison]

Yes, I know I'm asking for the impossible but I'm wondering if other people have noticed this and what ideas they have for combating the problem. We just printed a job where the designer carefully picked a huge variety of color builds from Pantone's Uncoated color bridge book. There were also several 4-color process images throughout the piece. Our press sheet matched well with our proof but the client assumed that the builds would match the book better than to our proof and did not question them at proof stage. He was VERY impressed with the way the images looked and I had to explain to him that if we had let our gains go as high as that uncoated PMS book, his pictures would not have looked as good as they did. I advised him to pick builds from the Coated version of color bridge--since that seems to be what the majority of designers do anyway--and we have more success matching those colors.

 

[rich apollo]

The idea of using curves though it sounds attractive does have some serious problems. For one thing the appearance of primaries and secondaries is different.

Pardon me for asking but, Huh? Plate curves cannot move the colors of your solids. 100% remains 100%

We just printed a job where the designer carefully picked a huge variety of color builds from Pantone's Uncoated color bridge book. There were also several 4-color process images throughout the piece. Our press sheet matched well with our proof but the client assumed that the builds would match the book better than to our proof and did not question them at proof stage.

I don't think you could have done anything better. This client's expectations weren't reasonable, and they're not grasping/embracing the value of the proof.

You could try a couple of things in the future, though.

1) Print your own swatch book. I've got a document with swatches of the entire PANTONE coated library (all that were in InDesign CS2) that you could print out to show your client what to expect.

2) If the client is picking colors that selectively, you might try doing mini swatch books with the designer to help them pick the tint mixes. Nazdar Consulting has developed an interesting product called CATZper to speed up this process. Nazdar Consulting Services