Printer Color Rendition Issues

[Cap'n Fishy]

I watched a bit of the video but I'll dive I into it. I worked in print media so basics like RGB and particularly CMYK was something I was well aware off. We never had control over it expect for applying the correct amounts of CMYK inks on the presses but I understand the big picture and have aways been fascinated by it.

I'm not sure if I'm right my thinking. About 7 years ago I was obsessed with accurate colour and photography. I thought X-Rites ColorChecker (CP) was the answer but blues and some other colours were more saturated than I remember seeing. I took pictures my wife's hand and she was wearing a teal sweater. Using a Canon profile it matched. The CP profile looked blue. I even put up the two files on the monitor and my wife immediately pointed to the Canon profile. I have to say the CP profile skin tones are beautiful. Perhaps that is what it's profiles are based on. At work all we used was X-Rite calibration equipment I have an i1 Display Pro at home. We used the Pantone system at work so the customer got the expected colours on printed products. You have to have these systems in place.

So I started to wonder who is accurate and who is right? C1 Pro whose claim to fame is colour, DXO, X-Rite, Adobe and so on? These days to me accurate colour means reproducing colours consistently for your process steps and/or passing it on to another party. For example a magazine requires X-Rite colour profiles. That is just macro look at it.

So I stopped banging my head against the wall and these days I just go with pleasing colour. I don't know if I'm right or not but my life is sure easier. I'm looking forward getting into that video to see how I improve with what I'm doing.

I produce a calendar each year, which obviously gets printed using CMYK, so I convert my images to CMYK before handing them over, so I can tweak any where the conversion from RGB changes things. I tend to see one colour in particular that CMYK just can never get anywhere near. That is lilac. Magenta and cyan can't seem to produce a lilac to match RGB. I will have a go at showing an example...

RGB:

CMYK:

 

[Archibald]

I produce a calendar each year, which obviously gets printed using CMYK, so I convert my images to CMYK before handing them over, so I can tweak any where the conversion from RGB changes things. I tend to see one colour in particular that CMYK just can never get anywhere near. That is lilac. Magenta and cyan can't seem to produce a lilac to match RGB. I will have a go at showing an example...

RGB:

CMYK:

View attachment 10785

The greens are different too.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Does the printer request CMYK? Pretty complex process to print one calendar or do you have multiple calendars printed?

I get 55 units done by a company. I had to change companies this year as the one I have been using for several years disappeared. They requested CMYK. I didn't check with the new one, but I assumed they worked in CMYK. Both sent me a draft to check, and most of the time I can make tweaks - like in the difference in the grass in that example. But lilac is always a washout in CMYK.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

The greens are different too.

Yes, I spotted that. I can usually tweak that kind of difference, but lilac always defeats me.

 

[Cap'n Fishy]

Using a smaller sheetfed offset press. You can minimize start up waste with a sheetfed. Check with a new printer as they may be digital and may accept a different format.

They seem very approachable (thankfully, because the old company were excellent in that respect), so I will have a word with them next year. The main thing I was worried about from a quality perspective was the change from sending the old company high quality JPEGs to sending the new company a multi-page PDF file. The file size was dramatically smaller! However, the quality was excellent.

 

[BigAl]

Well when it comes to JPEG compression you can go down to Adobe's Level 10/80, depending on if you get the 0 to 12 or 1 to 100 scale, without losing any measurable quality in the image over uncompressed 8 bit. Actually the Adobe 1-100 quality scale still actually only gives 13 different levels of compression. I did lots and lots of tests on this, with several different types of image, over 10 years ago. It's a bit surprising that you really can't see, or measure in Photoshop, any difference between those first few levels of compression. Going down from 12 to 10 on the quality scale will save you between 40% and 60% on file size, depending on the type of image. The busier the image with lots of fine detail, the less you will save. If the program that is producing your PDF file is recompressing the JPEG file from the equivalent of level 12 to level 10, well you will not be able to see any difference in the quality, but the overall PDF can be close to half the size of the individual maximum quality JPEG's combined.

I'd do the tests again, but the Lr Plugin that I had that would run the test for me, producing all 13 JPEGs and an 8 bit uncompressed TIFF, I don't have anymore, and probably wouldn't work if I could find it. That was back on Lr4. You can still find it over on POTN right now.

 

[ChuckMiller]

I am going to consider/try exporting jpg files from LR Classic at 80%. I have been using 100% for a few years.