How do you manage your color match

I adjust the color at the RIP most of the time, if I have a hard time with that I will print similar pantone colors and adjust the closest ones color built to get what I need.

 

I use color replacements and adjust the CMYK build.

 

Seems to depend more on the printer and/or the RIP. With our HP360 and Flexi Print Manager we've had to create custom profiles in order to match pantones. The only way we've found is to increase the number of passes which slows the print down tremendously. Also pdf seems to convert closer to those pantones. If sent using the RGB or CMYK values from the formulas listed in the pms swatch they don't come out right.

 

We recently started using Production Manager's color mapping. It does pretty well, but for some stupid reason the settings disappear and color matching to another job becomes even more time consuming. BUT when it works, it's pretty quick.

 

FlexiSign - Find the Pantone Spot color - convert to CYMK - Go to View>Create Swatch>CMYK use this tool to create your 10% color shifts in each direction of CMYK. This hits our color everytime basically. You can go into advanced and change the percentage of the color shift in each direction also.

 

Onyx has a Swatch Book Tool.
Either scan a pantone colour or select one from their palette and it prints a range of colours around it.
Select the closest one and use it's cmyk values.
Does Caldera have something like that?
It's a real time saver/

 

I'm loving this so far with our i1. It's saved a ton of time and produces some pretty accurate results even on the first try.

 

I have a sheet with all the pantone colors printed out from my printer. I will take my pantone book, find the color and match it to my chart to see how close it comes to that color or the ones around it.

 

Me too, I don't have Onyx or an Eye1 one anymore, but this method deals with 99.9% of my color corrections/matching.
I attached my color chart, import it into your design software save it where it's easy to access & then export it as you would normally export a print file.
Print it, mount it to scrap substrate. You will need to go into the file to see what the values are for that color, because it will be different from the same PMS color
in your design program's PMS color pallet.

 

trouble with that pdf chart is that the actual color swatches are cmyk not the pantone. Doesn't say what version either. I tried matching using various pantone versions and get a much different outcome.

 

That's why you have to go back into the file to see what the values are, regardless if it's CMYK or RGB chart (I use CMYK because that's what I have always used for color correcting).
If I match a color to 523c on my printed chart & then find out that color is (as shown above) C73 M100 Y0 K0
& I use those values on the same material, I will get that color (as long as I'm consistent with how I export my print files)
If you have huge color shift between material, you will need to create a couple charts.

 

Import their color source into CorelDraw (or whatever) and use a color pick to apply it to the objects needed. Then also add to your T/Cs something to the effect of "absolute color match is NOT guaranteed".

 

Been doing exactly that for lo these many years and have never, as in ever, had an issue. What comes out of the printer is the truth.

 

Onyx comes with a bunch of charts. I personally use the book... print it out, cut it, punch some holes and throw it in a binder. It also uses the pantone colors instead of CMYK.

They have about 5 different pantone charts / books available. If you have onyx... head into Samples\Pantone to find them. It's good for when you want a customer to pick a color, or to find a quick match.

 

Hi Andy,

nice chart!

I want to know what the CMYK values are based on? For example, in your chart, Pantone 1655 has a CMYK value of 0:63:91:0. If I look at Pantones own webpage where you can search for Pantone colors - https://www.pantone.com/color-finder - I see that they describe that color with the values 0:77:100:0

Are the values in your chart based on a specific profile?

Sorry, I'm new to this, and everywhere I look, it seems the CMYK values of a specific Pantone color is different.

 

I'm old at this and have never understood why the difference either.

If I print a pdf with pantone and wth 110pass it's very close but if I send using the cmyk formula by the swatch book it's way off.

 

No reason to apologize, that's a good question.
I don't know what the charts numbers are based on, I didn't create it, and found it so long ago I can't remember where.
What I can tell you is when I printed it out and check the colors against my PMS book, most were matches.
The reason I like using a CMYK PMS chart is I have been color correcting CMYK for almost 30 years, and have (almost) no idea how to adjust RGB.