Print color gamut?

[petesign]

I need to match a color and the conventional ways arent working well. Anyone know if there's a way to display and print the whole CMYK color gamut in photoshop so I can print it, look on my media, and mark about where the closest color is, and sample it back from the screen?

I thought about bringing up the picker, doing a screen capture, and blowing it up and printing it like that.. but thought there might be a better way.

Also, it might be cool to see what colors the mimaki could print, so I could make a display explaining how our printers dont print the entire spectrum like this graphic.

 

[petesign]

Ok, if anyone reads this later. Might have found my own solution. Went online and found this image of a RGB color spectrum. Pulling it up in photoshop, and printing it and putting it on my wall. Then I can just match what i want later and sample it from the file. Limited to size I can upload but you get the idea.

 

[P Wagner]

Many RIPs include tools to define 'custom' colors (aka color replacements, spot colors etc) and then reproduce them as accurately as possible, with the limitations of the printer's gamut for that media, of course. For example, in Versaworks, it is referred to as Spot Color Settings, Onyx refers to this functionality as User Defined Color Matching Tables, and other RIPs have similar tools.

If you want to visually compare gamuts, or even obtain a delta-E for specific colors then other software is required. I prefer ColorThink, but there are other apps that can do this.

 

[petesign]

really the trick here was to match a color someone had printed on another machine. The supplied artwork didn't match when I printed it on mine. This method actually worked pretty well, and I am satisfied with the result.

I am not sure what Rasterlink does for color matching tables, as Mimaki's supplied profiles for these inks has been pretty much spot on. Only a few times in the past two years have I had to go the swatch printing route to match a color. Reds, some olive greens and flesh tones have given me fits... and actually I think having this on my wall will help.

 

[BPI Color]

Don't do that. Not worth your time. Try this. Set up a 24x36 vector art file of PMS swatches. Each swatch can be about 1x.25 in size. Change everything to 4-color process. RIP and print as usual for 4-color process. You should be able to match it from there.