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Pantone color book?

Annette Asberg

Annette Asberg

New Member
Hi
I just wonder what kind of Pantone color books or what else you would use when trying to do a color match for an outdoor wall?
 
I

ikarasu

Active Member
Another option is color Muse. It's about half of the price of the nix and works perfectly for us. Every sales rep we have keeps one in their car for just in case.

You will want a solid coated Pantone book for color matching, even if you have the sensor nothing beats being able to find a very close Pantone match and being able to bring it back to the shop to make sure it matches what you're printing.

Nix and color Muse only work if your printer is profiled perfectly, which I don't think any printer ever is for every single Pantone color.

We will usually find the Pantone that is right scan it with the color Muse, put the lab values into onyx and it'll print it a swatch panel with different values... 9 out of 10 times the scanned color is a match and you don't have to use the other swatches, but that one out of 10 times is why having a Pantone book as well is crucial
 
brdesign

brdesign

New Member
Annette Asberg said:
Hi
I just wonder what kind of Pantone color books or what else you would use when trying to do a color match for an outdoor wall?
Click to expand...
I prefer the Pantone Bridge books that the Pantone swatch next to its CMYK conversion. This is handy to show customers that some Pantone colors can not be accurately reproduced in a CMYK process. I also have a Color Muse which is handy for scanning colors in situations where close enough is good enough
 
binki

binki

New Member
brdesign said:
I prefer the Pantone Bridge books that the Pantone swatch next to its CMYK conversion. This is handy to show customers that some Pantone colors can not be accurately reproduced in a CMYK process. I also have a Color Muse which is handy for scanning colors in situations where close enough is good enough
Click to expand...
Yeah, the bridge book is great. When a color is way off in the book we know to make adjustments or pick another color.
 
Geneva Olson

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
ikarasu said:
Another option is color Muse. It's about half of the price of the nix and works perfectly for us. Every sales rep we have keeps one in their car for just in case.

You will want a solid coated Pantone book for color matching, even if you have the sensor nothing beats being able to find a very close Pantone match and being able to bring it back to the shop to make sure it matches what you're printing.

Nix and color Muse only work if your printer is profiled perfectly, which I don't think any printer ever is for every single Pantone color.

We will usually find the Pantone that is right scan it with the color Muse, put the lab values into onyx and it'll print it a swatch panel with different values... 9 out of 10 times the scanned color is a match and you don't have to use the other swatches, but that one out of 10 times is why having a Pantone book as well is crucial
Click to expand...
Having pantone color codes is one thing and you can enter those values into your graphic arts program. And you're right. printers vary on output.
Pantone colors will often have a range of CMYK and RGB colors to choose from.

One of the things we do with the NIX is we scan the paint color or color that someone wants (I actually scanned a color from a magazine for someone's car and it worked). But we will add a few colors in that area to get the closest match.
 
bob

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
If you're printing then print a Pantone chart and use that. What comes out of the printer is the truth. If you're going for cut vinyl, use the vinyl manufacturer's swatch folder. Pantone is for clients to tell you a number that they want, not for you to try to match the client's colors.
 
Boudica

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
I'm trying to follow this... I just got lost... Are we talking about painting, or printing?
 
I

ikarasu

Active Member
bob said:
If you're printing then print a Pantone chart and use that. What comes out of the printer is the truth. If you're going for cut vinyl, use the vinyl manufacturer's swatch folder. Pantone is for clients to tell you a number that they want, not for you to try to match the client's colors.
Click to expand...
The operator before me used a Pantone chart he printed to pick colors and match to other customers pantones - they never profiled the printer so it wasn't terribly accurate... Everything was a few pantones off in terms of shades.

Then our printer breaks and we get a new one - now all of a sudden 3 years of files, as well as work orders were written up with the wrong Pantone since it was "what the printer thought the Pantone was" and not the real Pantone.

Now we do a small test print and if it's not a match, we find the match and input it into onyx to use those values for that Pantone. Now when the client comes back, or we dignup an old work order... It has the correct values on it. And if our printer breaks, or we print it on one of our 4 other printers... We know what to match it too.

We still have a Pantone chart printed out once in awhile because it aids in the above, and for one off customers who want to pick a pretty color it works good enough.

But I suggest everyone who can profiles their machine... And then properly sets up their rip to use the right global colors. Much more consistent that way!
 
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