Good investment?

[Colin]

I just did a Roland Webinar this morning, and they are offering these items on sale. Good investment for color management?

I asked one question to them during the session, but it never got answered: "Does all of this stuff go out the window when using the Roland Color Palette System?"

 

[m_s_p]

It really depends on how your business is. If you can print the Roland Swatches and show it to the customer and they are ok with it you are fine. If a customer specs a PMS Burg 209 and you show them the Roland swatch and they aren't ok with it you may have problems getting the color to match.

I have the i1 extreme kit and I haven't really used it much for our sign printing because the colors are close enough for our customers. With Versaworks you can make custom adjustments to the PMS colors for future use. I don't see enough color shift when switching ink cartridges or climate changes to fuss with custom profiles.

Everyone handles their profiling very differently.

 

[P Wagner]

"Does all of this stuff go out the window when using the Roland Color Palette System?"

The display calibration sustem (i1 display pro) has value regardless of the spot color system that you are using, including the Roland Color System. It will not affect the printed output directly, but should dramatically improve your ability to see accurate color on the display.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Colin! How was the webinar? I registered for it, but it was at around 4am my time so obviously slept right through it.

Hopefully it'll be put up soon on a link.

My opinion on your post, is neither of the three... pay a little bit more and get an i1 spectro so you can profile your printer, and read colours and the such.

The fastest approach all round on a Roland though, has to be its colour system. You can even get a chart with more colours than that and print that out on each media.

Print out all the PMS colours and choose from there - big time saver.

But the luxury of having a spectro, is that you can literally scan in the colour from a hard copy, and you know it's as close as it can get on that media if you've profiled it well.

Then again, spend enough time manually adjusting cmyk values and you can get pretty good at eyeing which you need more or less of too.

For some reason I couldn't get all that close a match with my i1 with an orange, and it wasn't in the colour library either... so I had to eye it myself and I was actually surprised how much closer it got!

 

[Colin]

Colin! How was the webinar?

I'm not sure. It seemed to be really focused on Pantone and Adobe. And given my limited time with the realm of digi colour management, I failed to see how it really applied. I've been happy with the Roland color system; I've printed the chart off and made it into a swatch, but I guess I'm wondering if getting the Roland colours to match the screen is even possible. shrug

I assume that you'll be able to view the webinar once they archive it? If so, I'd really like your opinion once you view it.

 

[signswi]

Knowing how to handle Pantone colors is pretty critical, any designs that come in from external sources done by a trained designer will use them as it's the only universal color system that's widely accepted throughout all design industries.

You should also never try to match the screen--you should try to get your screen to match your output. Screens are projected RGB light so you need a monitor that can display full print gamut (8bit, close to or over 100% AdobeRGB gamut coverage) and that you have hardware calibrated. Past that you want a output proofing profile in your various applications so that you can work with relative confidence and have a way of checking if colors are out of print gamut.

 

[Sticky Signs]

The question is how picky are your clients? Luckily, mine aren't to bad and I'm usually able to hit (or come pretty close) to specified colours.
I won't get into my personal feelings on colour management but if you think about it, you will never get your monitor to match your output from the printer. Why? Because your monitor is a luminated backlit device that uses RGB and your prints are front lit using CMYK. Unless you've got an extremely fancy and expensive monitor, you're simply wasting time.
Buy yourself a pantone book. Between that and the roland chart, you should be able to hit most colours with ease.

 

[Colin]

signswi & Sticky: Yes, I recently bought a new Dell U2410 which is wide gamut. I have loaded the Dell driver, so it's not just using the video card. But there's still lots do do to get it all nailed. sRGB? Adobe RGB? etc.

I have the Pantone "Bridge" swatch.

I'm fully aware that the screen is backlit, and the print is not (completely different animals) which is why I've been ignoring the screen so far and relying on the Roland swatch, but it seems like getting the two close is possible, but takes knowledge and time dicking around with it.

In the last year, matching to a Pantone colour hasn't come up, but I understand that it probably will. But here's a question: If I apply a "Pantone" colour to a contour or lettering (in CorelDraw), that doesn't mean that I will get that colour out of my Roland SP540i, or does it?

 

[Sticky Signs]

I find my printer does a pretty good job of matching a colour if I use a pantone swatch in Illy. I can plug in the CMYK values that the pantone book gives me and the colour isn't as good as using the actual pantone swatch.

 

[Colin]

I can plug in the CMYK values that the pantone book gives me and the colour isn't as good as using the actual pantone swatch.

See, now that I don't understand.

 

[Suz]

Knowing how to handle Pantone colors is pretty critical, any designs that come in from external sources done by a trained designer will use them as it's the only universal color system that's widely accepted throughout all design industries.

Singswi... I totally agree! I have (3) Pantone books in my shop, have always had them to use as reference when somebody really wants to talk color.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

A while ago I found a completely printable document with all the pantones as well as cmyk swatches in just about every color ... had it printed and bound ... good stuff ... still use it today to compare to my color samples I can actually print based upon the machine and color profile I need to use.
but definantly, use a printed version from your system and get a pantone book ... worth the time on that one.

 

[Colin]

A while ago I found a completely printable document with all the pantones as well as cmyk swatches in just about every color ...

Link?

 

[signswi]

See, now that I don't understand.

Here's the answer: the Pantone Bridge CMYK values are for process offset printing. We're not offset printers. The process colors in your inkjet have different characteristics than offset process inks. Inkjet process is typically a wider gamut which is why you use a RIP with internal PMS color tables to do the conversion from PMS to Process, as the RIP knows the gamut of your printer (or it should, if you have a calibrated output profile). And that's without even considering that there are large format printers out there that add Lc, Lm, Green, Red...(Lc and Lm don't make for a wider gamut but they do make for a smoother and fuller gamut, so you can hit more PMS colors with them than offset process. Green/Red obviously make gamuts wider).

Make sense? The Bridge book is basically a "worst case it looks this bad" scenario to show clients. For closer matches use the RIP conversion and adjust the color table manually if need be to get closer to the actual PMS. We charge a bit extra for this.