Publisher and Color Management - ?

[Prepper]

This is my first run-in with this app. A department in our company wants to print a monthly newsletter in color from Publish to an HP4700dn laser. The artist/designer is unhappy that the color he prints on his inkjet in his office doesn't match the color off the 4700 in the accounting office where the newsletter will be printed. They are asking me to get the color adjusted to match. From my very limited knowledge of Publisher, there isn't any color managament capability in that program is there? I can create a custom profile but don't know how to apply it at the printer, the driver does have a place to select Custom Profile but no instructions on how to do that in the driver or the manual.

I thought of exporting to a PDF and then color managing and print from Acrobat but they need to do a merge because its variable data on each of about 2,000 copies.

I've been told there has to be some way to do this because companies sell lots of templates for Publisher online and they couldn't if the color didn't come out right on different printers, (I know, I know, but looking for some confirmation here because of my inexperience with Publisher).

They are printing this on plain laser\copier paper and can't tell me for sure if the jpeg images placed into Publisher are even tagged or not.

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[gordo]

This is my first run-in with this app. A department in our company wants to print a monthly newsletter in color from Publish to an HP4700dn laser. The artist/designer is unhappy that the color he prints on his inkjet in his office doesn't match the color off the 4700 in the accounting office where the newsletter will be printed. They are asking me to get the color adjusted to match.

Out of curiosity...since the designer(?) and files are created within your company, why not suggest that they proof the job as it's created on the HP4700dn laser rather than on his peculiar inkjet printer? Using the HP production printer as the proofer would eliminate the color match problem more effectively than trying to compensate with color manglement methods.

best, gordon p

 

[Prepper]

Proofing

Proofing

That's kind of where we're headed I think, he is now connected to the HP and will be adjusting things to print to his liking there. Probably will only entail 3-4 images each month so not a major time thing.
Just wanted to ask and see if there's some way I didn't know of by any chance.
Thanks

 

[mattbeals]

There is no color management in Publisher. Everything in Publisher (and Office or any other GDI based application) is sRGB because it relies on Windows GDI. So knowing that you can convert from sRGB to the HP's profile. But when you do that you have to be careful of RGB grays and blacks as well as RGB versions of the primary and secondary colors. Callas pdfToolbox has a set of logic that is specifically built to convert Office (or any other GDI based applications document) to your desired CMYK space.

Now undrstanding that, Publisher CMYK is crap. You are best off sending out RGB in my opinion. If the comapny is selling templates then I would say that it is better to design the templates in RGB and let the printer driver handle color management (if it is even possible) so that the client (person buying the template(s)) will at least have consistent color on their devices. I don't mean to say the color is accurate or anyting like that. But they will probably be familiar with its characteristics and behavior. But in short, try Callas pdfToolbox for handling the color conversion since it is the best tool available in my opinion for what you want to do.