Colour Matching for wide format printers - a handy utility

[beermonster]

Sometimes spot colour matching is a PITA - even with a system linearized, profiled, calibrated and verified to whatever standards you choose.

And worse of all is if they want a "visual" match and not really an accurate one.

Well - I just tried a superb utility called Catzper that helps massively. Sure, we have the other one posted on here a while back (CMYKSurround) which is great, and Catzper is just another tool in the box

You do need a spectro though.

You read in a "colour" from a sample to get the L•A•B• values, punch those in to Catzper and it returns a pdf with the original target colour reading in the centre, and a shed load of damm close colours all round it (very similar to cmyksurround). It saves you chasing cmyk mixes etc

But the advantage is the original spectro reading gets you really close first time. You then treat the pdf as a normal project in you work-flow, print it as usual and select the most visually pleasing result/the one the customer really wants as opposed to what they supplied.

Then you do gotta go change the artwork to the values of the segment selected.

catzper also gives you a "drift" tolerance chart which you can share with your client and agree colour drift tolerances. Of course you can't in reality as there's never enough time for such niceties, however it's nice to have that feature should the need arise

tried it - liked it - and it's relatively cheap if you have lots to do - in wide format i've found there's quite a bit to do! it's also handy to get nearer matching colours across different medias

Roughly 300US dollaz a year or summat like £350 uk quids

http://www.nazdarconsulting.com/CATZper.asp

oh - and there's a FREE trial!

I am not on commission :shocked:

[Joe]

 

I would be interested if we still did any proofing but we've moved past that. Not sure if that is good or bad but we're saving the owners a boatload of cash by eliminating those big costly wide format printers that cost about $4K to fill it up with supplies.

[beermonster]

yeah i know what ya mean - the consumables cost a bucket. we shop around for cheaper media then get stung with crappy profiles  etc etc

i COULD do away with our wide format printers - however since it's our bread n butter I better not :rolleyes: