From Creation to Printing (Episode 2)

Did you know that the Pantone® company, in those early days, manufactured varnishes to cover the nails of these ladies?
Today we know them mainly for their color charts used in the field of printing and industry.
Pantone® swatch Book are useful for colourists, they have become reference points in the field of color.
They are used to communicate, research and control colors.
But beware! misused, they could cause a lot of problems ...

1. Color search

The only purpose of paper color charts is to help choose a color, but they do not claim to be precise enough to allow color control.
Visual inspection also depends on the condition of the color, your Pantonier, the luminous environment in which you will visualize your colors and ... of you! Because you surely know, color is subjective.
From the first day of use, your color charts can have significant deviations.
Colors printed on a Pantone® color chart cannot have absolute values and are necessarily reproduced with tolerances.

Not to mention updates. The current Pantone® solid coated color chart contains 2163 colors, and yours?

So digital?
It is indeed the most reliable solution because by using a spectrophotometer and an adapted software it brings us the following advantages:
- Measurement precision
- Use of spectral values or official Lab
- No interpretation of the color
- Control of the conditions under which the measurement is carried out
- Precise quantification of the difference between the measured color and the reference values
- Updating of color charts
- Creation and use of personalized color charts (samples of leathers, fabrics, vinyl, etc ...)

Coraye integrates a color search function in its "Color Finder" module which makes it possible to find the closest reference color to a measured sample and to quantify the difference (Delta E).

Standardize PANTONE® Color Charts

It all depends on your source and your production universe.
The royal way is the use of color table containing spectral data, as they allow adaptations such as the prediction of metameria, the change of observer angle and illuminating and much more.

A reference spectral file can be acquired from Pantone®, for example.
A RIP licensed to use by the publisher contains libraries with master values from Pantone®, RAL®, HKS® or others at printing standard (D50 / 2 ° M1). But only the colors available at the time of purchase of your RIP… And if you have to produce to D65 / 10 ° standards (textile industry and others) what do you do?

"Don't worry !" you would say, I only work with printing standards and I have my Adobe® license and all the color charts that go with it! Uh no, there is a small problem with the swatches of the Adobe® suite (and other software). They are "M2", ie zero UV in the light.

And generally the standards in force in production are in "M0" or "M1" therefore with UV.
Since the supports AND the inks have a more or less accentuated reaction to UV we can easily guess the problem if we print using “M2” data.
Sometimes you are forced to use different RIPs, print drivers or proofing systems, each of which uses its own libraries.
Therefore it happens that a color can be printed with sometimes significant deviations. When you have to change the printing medium for one reason or another it can become a real headache.
It would then be necessary to homogenize the libraries in order to at least already have a common base.

But not every library can be used with just any RIP or software (Adobe® suite for example). Many are the proprietary file types.
And what about in-house references? We don't usually find them in standard libraries and we resolve to use a Pantone® or another direct tone closer which can reach a very, very high ∆…
Either we shout “Banzai” and print as is or 'eager to catch up as best as possible with the “try & error” method.

Coraye allows you to import many color table formats from RIPs or from software such as the Adobe® suite. The idea is to use a single spot color reference and deploy it on all your software, such as it is a stream, a RIP or a software.

To find out more, visit the website http://www.coraye.com or contact us
Email: contact@coraye.com