Printing A Color Swatch Table For Reference.

[DRD0198]

So my biggest issues lately, have been (seems Common) that Red looks Orange or that Blue is Purple. The computer screen looks great but the print looks way different (every preview sent to the customer says there is a slight color change to be expected) anyway. To my question I was browsing and seen another sign shop had this printout of color swatches seemed to be a very useful tool to show the colors that your printer prints and what it looks like laminated and finished, is this common how or where do I get something like that? Before I decided to spend hours building one I figured I would ask the more experienced. There was not a lesson on this in my Google and Youtube Certification Classes.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Most RIPs have color charts you can print and also load into your Illustrator or Corel software. So you print the color chart, have your customer choose the color they want, and then select that color swatch in your design software and it should print the color you want. Let us know what RIP you're using and most likely someone can tell you how it's done in that RIP. You can also just use Pantone color swatch files that you can find online as long as your design software has a license to use them that is!

 

[DRD0198]

Most RIPs have color charts you can print and also load into your Illustrator or Corel software. So you print the color chart, have your customer choose the color they want, and then select that color swatch in your design software and it should print the color you want. Let us know what RIP you're using and most likely someone can tell you how it's done in that RIP. You can also just use Pantone color swatch files that you can find online as long as your design software has a license to use them that is!

Thanks for the reply! I Design in Adobe Illustrator and print out of Flexi 21 and I have an HP latex 110 printer. I am not familiar with different swatch tables ect ect I guess I just always went with whatever each program had and got it close and went with it.

 

[Kbrecken]

One way to approach this is to find online a Pantone Color Coated Chart or build one from scratch (which would take quite some time) I've looked long and hard to find a recent one that is actually built in Pantones, alas to no avail, most I've found are built in RGB or CMYK, the only one I have is from 2017, see attached

anyhoo, depending on how far you want to take this, you could essentially print it out, pin it to the wall and then by choosing the swatch you or your client like go back and build the art using that specific PMS colour, as long as you print the art out using the same settings & media used for the chart the colour results should be reasonably predicable.

The Versaworks RIP that came with my Roland printers used to work this way, back when I had an XC-540 / XF-640 solvent printer, it had it's own printable chart and a Swatch Library you could load into your Adobe applications,

 

[2B]

remember that the "color" will appear differently on print media.
* Gloss vs Matte
* Banner vs vinyl
* Laminated vs unlaminated


when you "proof" make sure you are exporting as CMYK, as that is the color you are printing in and will help with color accuracy

 

[Kbrecken]

check this out, worked like a charm, but the script is 9 years old, so I'm trying to find a way to update the javascript to include the most recent Pantone Coated Library,

GitHub - trevjonez/Pantone-Color-Book-Builder: AI script for building out a pantone book for use with print system spot color matching.

AI script for building out a pantone book for use with print system spot color matching. - GitHub - trevjonez/Pantone-Color-Book-Builder: AI script for building out a pantone book for use with prin...

github.com

 

[ikarasu]

I'll post mine in a bit.

I configured one to use 8.5 x 11 sheets with cut lines ... Then you can graphtec / summa out the 3 holes and page and put them in a binder. It's great for sales reps to bring when they have to color match something in the field and all our pantone books are gone

 

[Stacey K]

I printed the PMS Coated Swatches and made a little book with a large binder clip. As you can see, it's very homemade - but it works!

I also will print little samples of customers logos and save the swatch naming it "Joes Lawn Green" "Pigeon River Blue" etc.

When I design a logo or suggest colors for things I try and use the colors I know print well, like "Pigeon River Blue" etc. because those usually are matched up with Oracal vinyl color and an ink color for screen printing.

Very boring - yes. Does it make things easy for me - yes.

 

[ikarasu]

So this is what we use. I dont remember when I generated it... I'm sure its missing some of the fancy pantones of the month crap.


It's using a cutline called "Perf", so you may have to set that up in your onyx / if its not default. Or it'll print with the purple line, and you can just straight edge it, throw it through a hole punch and throw it into a binder... I thought I had a version where the graphtec cut the holes out, but I think I nixed that idea when I had 100 tiny circles on the floor and realized it takes 1/10 as long to just punch the holes.


We print one for reflectives, one for gloss, one for matte, etc... its a good sanity check to open the book and if customer just has to have a pantone # we dont always print, we can compare it vs printing a sample and wasting 30 mins.


We used to use the big charts that come with onyx, but find this more convenient...can have half a dozen binders on the shelf vs a big 4 FT wall print

 

[Caren Hines]

One way to approach this is to find online a Pantone Color Coated Chart or build one from scratch (which would take quite some time) I've looked long and hard to find a recent one that is actually built in Pantones, alas to no avail, most I've found are built in RGB or CMYK, the only one I have is from 2017, see attached

anyhoo, depending on how far you want to take this, you could essentially print it out, pin it to the wall and then by choosing the swatch you or your client like go back and build the art using that specific PMS colour, as long as you print the art out using the same settings & media used for the chart the colour results should be reasonably predicable.

The Versaworks RIP that came with my Roland printers used to work this way, back when I had an XC-540 / XF-640 solvent printer, it had it's own printable chart and a Swatch Library you could load into your Adobe applications,

Does anyone have the updated Pantone color chart to print? The one posted above is 2017

 

[myront]

I printed the PMS Coated Swatches and made a little book with a large binder clip. As you can see, it's very homemade - but it works!

I also will print little samples of customers logos and save the swatch naming it "Joes Lawn Green" "Pigeon River Blue" etc.

When I design a logo or suggest colors for things I try and use the colors I know print well, like "Pigeon River Blue" etc. because those usually are matched up with Oracal vinyl color and an ink color for screen printing.

Very boring - yes. Does it make things easy for me - yes.

Ha, we have a "Jersey Mike" green, "Sacred Heart" purple, "NWFSC" red, and a few others.

 

[Caren Hines]

Does anyone have the updated PDF Pantone color chart to print? The one posted above is 2017

 

[myront]

When we first got our HP Latex printers we started with printing different Pantone charts. BTW Corel has had a nice macro to create them for years. Anyway, we soon realized that there are too many variables to consider. Media type, laminate type, number of passes, etc. We now just rely on the old Pantone swatch book for the customer to pick from. We explain that it would be as close to that as possible. Color matching vehicle colors only compounds the issues as most have some sort of "pearl" or "metallic" look. We usually use the pantone swatch to get in the ballpark and just tweak the CMYK values and print a mess of swatches.

 

[jfiscus]

Another very important point to mention when printing these old Pantone charts that used to come with the RIP software is that they were built using very old color values and software (2017 mentioned above). If you are going to print them off for useful reference, you need to open the file you downloaded, copy the content, create a new file in your regular software with your regular settings/colorspace/etc, then paste that content into it and save THAT as your print sample. Print that file using the same settings/profile you are using to print.

 

[mbasch]

I know the most current posts on this are about premade pantone charts, but I wanted share this tool I found which is an .AI script for creating color charts:

https://creativemarket.com/sitl/6234530-SITL-ColorChart-PRO-v2

I have nothing to do with the script. I just found it more useful than the Onyx swatch builder so thought I'd share it.

 

[Fechin]

So my biggest issues lately, have been (seems Common) that Red looks Orange or that Blue is Purple. The computer screen looks great but the print looks way different (every preview sent to the customer says there is a slight color change to be expected) anyway. To my question I was browsing and seen another sign shop had this printout of color swatches seemed to be a very useful tool to show the colors that your printer prints and what it looks like laminated and finished, is this common how or where do I get something like that? Before I decided to spend hours building one I figured I would ask the more experienced. There was not a lesson on this in my Google and Youtube Certification Classes.

I print out one of these for reference for each of my printers at value( usually profile off) to match the chart. Helps finding colors and knowing what printers can do, like my solvent hits greens better than my latex.

 

[Geneva Olson]

Thanks for the reply! I Design in Adobe Illustrator and print out of Flexi 21 and I have an HP latex 110 printer. I am not familiar with different swatch tables ect ect I guess I just always went with whatever each program had and got it close and went with it.

I have an HP315 and had the same issues. One thing I have learned over the years is when I get a file with a good red or good blue, I will pull the color from that file.

 

[bob]

So my biggest issues lately, have been (seems Common) that Red looks Orange or that Blue is Purple. The computer screen looks great but the print looks way different (every preview sent to the customer says there is a slight color change to be expected) anyway. To my question I was browsing and seen another sign shop had this printout of color swatches seemed to be a very useful tool to show the colors that your printer prints and what it looks like laminated and finished, is this common how or where do I get something like that? Before I decided to spend hours building one I figured I would ask the more experienced. There was not a lesson on this in my Google and Youtube Certification Classes.

To what are your rendering intents set?

 

[Notarealsignguy]

When we first got our HP Latex printers we started with printing different Pantone charts. BTW Corel has had a nice macro to create them for years. Anyway, we soon realized that there are too many variables to consider. Media type, laminate type, number of passes, etc. We now just rely on the old Pantone swatch book for the customer to pick from. We explain that it would be as close to that as possible. Color matching vehicle colors only compounds the issues as most have some sort of "pearl" or "metallic" look. We usually use the pantone swatch to get in the ballpark and just tweak the CMYK values and print a mess of swatches.

Good advice. I've never had an issue with close enough. As for vehicle matching, good luck. Even with solids, the color shifts between the paint and vinyl depending on lighting. Even when you spray repair panels on a vehicle you have to blend it because paint doesn't always match even when using the factory paint and color code. This is even worse with silvers and whites. You can easily spot cars that have had repairs and the shop did not blend into the adjacent panels. Look at a new vehicle with a lighter color like silver, the plastic bumper will shift from matching to not depending on light.