Color In Digital Printing

Welcome to our inaugural post on our blog where the subject matter will roam across many topics and ideas from marketing to print thru discs and back again.  Our hope is that you will expand your understanding of our products and how you can extend your marketing effectiveness. (My real hope is that you might even laugh once in awhile here!).

At ISS we offer digital duplication in the form of print (paper) and disc (CD, DVD, USB) complimented by design, variable data merge, mailing, shipping and warehouse services.  An ideal client would use all of our services, but we are arranged to supply single items to our customers.

Today I would like to delve into our digital print offerings.  The color in digital printing is an interesting topic. Most of our customers believe that the color on their computer screen will match the color of our output and reds will be red and blues will be blue.  The reality is that is not always the case.

It is important to understand that many of our computer monitors are not calibrated and that over time the display colors will change.  And every now and again, what we see for color on our display does not match the output of the color from the printer.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it could be your monitor!  For this simple reason, if the color output is critical we suggest that ISS print a proof for you to review before production.  Yes, yes my advisors tell me this is expensive to do, but it eliminates any disappointments by making sure the output matches expectations.

For digital printers to hold accurate colors, the machines need to be calibrated and we calibrate every morning and if required, we will calibrate before a particular job that we know to be tricky (we learn by printing and duplicating many of your jobs – see the benefits of a relationship!).

Here is a picture of our calibration:

By calibrating every morning we bring our machines back to the factory settings for color and thus we know that the machine is reporducing accurate colors.  But calibrating takes some time and some cost and  not all printers are willing to take this step.  When not calibrated, the machines can drift so the color produced today may not be the same as next month.  We are committed to producing the best output possible and thus we calibrate a much as required.

Another step we take is to supply our color charts to those clients that need (or request) them.  Here is our color chart:

This is our machines interpretation of the pantone colors and by supplying this chart to designers and customers we can help ensure that the desired color is produced.

For many of our print customers none of these steps are required…the color is just not that critical or difficult.  For some, these steps are crucial.  We have found over time that by taking all these steps continuously and consistently we produce better overall quality for all our customers consistently week after week.

Till the next post, cheers!!

Color In Digital Printing