Web offset color mgmt

[jotterpinky]

We recently outsourced a catalog to a vendor that printed it via web press. When we received the finished job I was rather unimpressed by the color throughout the catalog. It looked very "muddy" like too much ink was laid down. I'm wondering if this is something that we ought to have adjusted in the file. We normally print all of our stuff in-house via sheetfed offset and the covers we printed from the same file looked great. We normally use the Gracol 07' profile when creating files and suggest to our clients to do the same. We've never had too many issues even when they've designed using the US coated sheetfed profile in Adobe products. However in this case I'm wondering if we should have changed the working space profile to "US Web Coated" or something similar being as it was printed on a web press. Does anyone have input on this situation so we can get more accurate color for future run?

 

[Bloodsaler]

We us SWOP as our weboff press color gamut.And we convert icc profile in our Prinergy workflow.
Use standard sheetfeed profile will cause the "Muddy" problem, because the LWC paper can`t contain too much ink as coated paper~

 

[Colorworx]

Solutions

Solutions

Heatset web offset has different printing characteristics compare w/ sheetfed offset. The muddy effect is due to the extra dot gain/TVI produce.

Thus you need to convert your colour from sheetfed coated to SWOP heatset web LWC; for a better quality result, make sure your printer is ISO-12647-2 compliant, if not, you have to obtain the a professional icc profile of their press+paper.

For details, you may PM me.

George
G7 Expert

 

[Werby]

You outsourced a job to another printer and didn't even have a discussion with them about preferred profiles and/or TAC? You can get more accurate color by talking to your printer and asking how they want files prepared. If you really want to go the extra mile, send them some test files and ask them to pull a proof, then you can see what you're going to get.

I'll resort here to an old joke that still holds true: The most important piece of color management equipment in your shop is the telephone. Don't just blindly send files out and hope for the best. You are lucky you were just "unimpressed" rather than horrified.

 

[jotterpinky]

Werby, good idea. We've used these guys many times with little to no problems. Their pricing is great the the service sucks. We've always provided them files using our default gracol 07 profiles and it's been pretty trouble free until this job. I've tried calling with no luck...they apparently aren't interested in taking business over the phone and actually speaking with their customers. Maybe we'll look elsewhere for a vendor to provide this service for us. I guess it seems you usually "get what you pay for".

 

[TerryWyse]

We recently outsourced a catalog to a vendor that printed it via web press. When we received the finished job I was rather unimpressed by the color throughout the catalog. It looked very "muddy" like too much ink was laid down. I'm wondering if this is something that we ought to have adjusted in the file. We normally print all of our stuff in-house via sheetfed offset and the covers we printed from the same file looked great. We normally use the Gracol 07' profile when creating files and suggest to our clients to do the same. We've never had too many issues even when they've designed using the US coated sheetfed profile in Adobe products. However in this case I'm wondering if we should have changed the working space profile to "US Web Coated" or something similar being as it was printed on a web press. Does anyone have input on this situation so we can get more accurate color for future run?

I think your best bet would be to prep everything as you do now, for GRACoL_Coated1, and then run everything through a device link profile set to convert from GRACoL to SWOP_Coated3 (or _Coated5, whatever's appropriate for the stock). By running the GRACoL-prepped files through a *device link profile*, the "appearance" of GRACoL will be mostly maintained (saturated colors will suffer slightly since SWOP is a slightly smaller gamut than GRACoL) and it will correct for the difference in total area coverage (too-high total ink may have been the main culprit for the "muddiness" you saw). This would definitely be the *cleanest* way to do it, although you may not have the capability to do it.

Regards,
Terry