Seeking advice on higher gamut printing

campo

New member
I'm new to the forum and a customer of the printing industry as I'm working on a self-published book about color and textiles. This will be a high-end coffee-table book with a lot of images with nuanced colors so having a wider gamut is important.

Can you please help me understand the relative benefits of a 4C XCMYK workflow from InDesign versus a Creo Prinergy PDF workflow? Both options are with teams that make high-quality books, and stochastic screens would be used in both cases. Thanks in advance.
 
I'm new to the forum and a customer of the printing industry as I'm working on a self-published book about color and textiles. This will be a high-end coffee-table book with a lot of images with nuanced colors so having a wider gamut is important.

Can you please help me understand the relative benefits of a 4C XCMYK workflow from InDesign versus a Creo Prinergy PDF workflow? Both options are with teams that make high-quality books, and stochastic screens would be used in both cases. Thanks in advance.

"nuanced" is not what a wider gamut provides.

InDesign is a page layout/publishing application.

4C XCMYK is a term coined by an organization called Idealliance. The idea is to increase the solid ink density of standard CMYK inks on a press to increase the potential saturation of the color that standard CMYK ink deliver. It cannot compensate for the gamut deficiencies in the basic CMYK ink hues. I.e. Orange made with Magenta and Yellow will still appear "dirty". XCMYK is a standardized version of "DMaxx" which predates XCMYK ( https://the-print-guide.blogspot.com/2009/01/printing-at-dmaxx-maximizing-cmyk-gamut.html )

It is not necessary to use InDesign to do expanded/wider gamut in order to do XCMYK. It is only necessary to find a printing company that will do this type of work.

InDesign, like other page layout applications, does not do stochastic screening so it is not necessary to use InDesign to layout your pages. It is only necessary to find a printing company that prints using stochastic/FM screens.

If you want to expand the gamut in order to compensate for the color deficiencies of standard CMYK inks then you need to find a printshop that does "Expanded Gamut" printing using extra process inks - typically Green, Orange/Red, and/or Blue/Violet.
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Thank you! The article was helpful and I understand your point about the extra inks providing the value.
 
Yes. As of late last year some of their presses have been upgraded with FM. But even without FM, the Indigo's Indichrome OGV can produce some awesome images.
 

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