Hitting the Target: Colour Management

Our presses are regularly serviced to make sure that we achieve the most consistent results possible but how do you know that we’ll achieve the colour you’re looking for?

A commonly used standard where ink densities are concerned is ISO12647. That standard alone warrants a few paragraphs, but to keep it simple, let’s just say that over years of

producing magazines, we have found that these densities are a touch too heavy for images that have not been through post production and retouching. And a large proportion of the pages we handle haven’t.

The most important point here is do not rely on your monitor unless you have undertaken some form of calibration and you have sufficient previous experience of sending work to press and therefore have acquired an ‘interpretative eye’.

The simplest, cheapest way of checking colour before sending to us is to take an eyedropper sample in Photoshop® of the CMYK percentages in the given area on your page and compare these numbers with those in our colour selector (drop us a note and we’ll send you one). This will tell you (a) how close your monitor is to the printed result and (b)what you need to do to your image (usually in ‘curves’ in Photoshop®) to achieve your desired objective.

If you do a lot of colour retouching or find this too long winded, we have colour specialists who can spend a day with you and help you calibrate your equipment to reasonable tolerances so that you can use your screen as a guide. It may cost extra but we have lots of happy customers who concluded it was a great investment.