Colours for professional printing? (Full Version)

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spinningjennie -> Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 7:58:46)

Problem summary:
How can I work with a professional stationery printer to do a good colour match 2 colour print job on my 2 colour logo?

Problem detail:
My newly created stationery logo is blue and yellow. However, since I can split my logo into 4 CMYK channels (the blue has a bit of majenta in it) does that mean it is not possible to do an accurate match 2 colour print job? I'm using Paint Shop Pro 8.1. I have no printed colour to match my logo. (I want to do a 2 colour print job because it is much cheaper than 4 colour.)

Very grateful for any advice!

spinningjennie



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 8:37:37)

ask your printer if they can do one spot colour (your blue) and then just CMYK yellow (i.e. 100% yellow) and how much that would be. that way they mix the 'blue' (e.g. cyan 83%, magenta 12%.... etc) into one ink colour and then use that as one colour.



Nigel -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 14:24:18)

In printing the number of colours is determined by how many different colours you use at the time of printing. Whilst printing technology has moved on basic screen printing required a pass for each colour. The colours are mixed in advance so even though your colours are made up of more than one colour the print part should treat it as just a 2 colour job. This is of course, providing they can get a close enough match (most printers can).

Stationery printing can be done digitally now and small runs are much more affordable then they used to be. With this type of equipment the number of colours is not an issue as the machines run in a similar way to an inkjet printer.

Nigel



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 19:39:57)

Many thanks Dave & Nigel for your speedy responses, which do help re. how to have a 2 colour job with colour matching.

I've had no experience with professional printers, and I'm now a little less baffled about how you work with a printer to get the right colours.

Nigel, I guess you'r implying that as long as I can indicate to a printer the blue & yellow I want - from their PMS pantone colour chart - that this would be treated as a 2 colour job, even if the blue has some majenta in it. (So far I don't have a printed logo to show them the colours I require. I only have a web version).

I'm a bit puzzled as to how the printer gains accurate colour information from the file I send him. I don't think I can specify a particular pantone blue colour within Paint Shop Pro 8.1.

regards
spinningjennie



Donkey -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 20:03:57)

If you specify a 2 colour print job using pms references the printer should use inks matching the pantone reference numbers of the two colours specified. The make up of the individual colours is not a consideration because they are not made up from a four colour set they are individual spot colours. However you will probably have to provide your printer with artwork separated into the two colours, although some would work from a good quality two colour original output as a high resolution pdf file.

I've never used Paint Shop Pro (I use Corel PhotoPaint) but I assume you can identify the colour as a hex or RGB value. To convert to pantone I use this site.



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/24/2005 20:48:07)

Thanks donkey for your help.

1. Can you define 'spot colour' for me?

2. To provide artwork could I split the colour channels into R, G & B, or would I likely need to provide just the yellow layer as one PDF image, and just the blue layer as another PDF image?

3. The hex value of the blue is: 0066CC, with R:0, G:102, B:204 which isn't on your listing, but thanks for the link anyway.

regards
spinningjennie




Nigel -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/25/2005 14:31:26)

I worked in the printing industry for 7 years which helps a bit, but that was quite a few years ago so I'm not up to scratch any more.

I would suggest taking your logo to the printer (best try 2 or 3) and ask them. Often they are quite helpful and will either create it for you from your image or explainto you what you need to do within your own software (PaintshopPro).

Nigel



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 6:55:04)

Thanks for the advice Nigel. Yes, I've been asking printers questions, but I don't think I quite understand their answers - being a complete beginner in this. I guess once I decide on the printer, I'll ask more in depth questions re. how to get the right colours.

I'm puzzled as to why I'm getting such a huge variation in prices:
eg 4 quotes for 1000 letterhead of '2 colours': $Aust119, $A255, $A321, $355. Think I'll have to check out some samples of the cheapest & take it from there!

Thanks again!
spinningjennie



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 8:30:58)

depends as well on the paper stock - the weight and finish/quality of the paper.



Donkey -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 8:38:04)

quote:

4 quotes for 1000 letterhead of '2 colours':

If you have a good quality inkjet printer why bother with printing letterheads at all?

If you sent up a letterhead as a document template in Word it will look just as good, and you only print it when you need it.

We stopped using preprinted letterheads years ago. IMHO they are a total waste of money. All you need to do is make sure that any images you use in the template are CYMK, put the letterhead part in the header and footer area. (If you right click the image>format picture>Layout>In front of text, you can position the image anywhere on the page and it will still be part of the header or footer. You can use this technique to put a watermark image on the page (right click the image>format picture>Picture>then set the color to watermark. Also always use a good quality coated white paper for your outgoing correspondence.

Another advantage to this method is that it is easy and cheap to create other templates from this one to make Press Releases, Information Sheets etc.

I have also set up standard envelope templates with our logo and return address, we print the envelopes for all correspondence and it looks really neat.



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 10:12:32)

most desktop inkjets etc use rgb (input) for pics and convert themselves - the assumption being i suppose that most users of such printers wouldn't use cmyk... i would imagine the results on desk top printers (at least normal, non-postscript ones, is best when images are left as rgb)

great idea from donkey!
edit: you could even invest the money for the print job in a shiny new laser/good quality desktop inkjet



Donkey -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 10:42:57)

quote:

most desktop inkjets etc use rgb (input) for pics and convert themselves -
Thanks for that Dave, I assumed the opposite. I have had pretty good results using CMYK though.

Incidentally I would humbly suggest that the output from a good quality inkjet looks more like a litho printed letterhead than that from a laser. The laser print looks slightly glossy and to me a tad artificial. Laser printers are fine for brochures photographs etc. but not for general business stationery: letterheads, compliments slips etc. I reccomend Epson, I have two Stylus Photo 1290's both are over 2 years old and have been used and abused for most of that time. They are still going strong.

BTW I only use jettec brand ink cartridges (half the price with 30% more ink and IMHO for this purpose better quality than the original epson cartridges). In another thread a while ago Gail pointed out that the ink could fade over time if used for photographs, but I haven't found that to be a problem.

It is important to use good quality paper. I have found that Epson's photo quality inkjet paper is superb for letters, but older traditional papers such as conquerer don't give such good results.



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 10:47:09)

worth testing with rgb and cmyk to see which is best. you could certainly be right about the laser printers - come to think of it they can look a bit *shiny*



Nigel -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/27/2005 17:07:40)

The large variance in quotes is quite common.

It can be due to the paper quality but variances of the nature you described for 1000 letterheads sound as though some are greedier than others. They're worse if they think you don't know what your talking about.

Cheapest is not always best but then neither is dearest. If you give them a specification with your logo (forget the number of colours let them work it out) for 1000 letterheads on paper x, y or z (which will quoted as the finish and in GSM (grammes per square metre). then the quotes should be like for like. Then its just a choice of cost and you're gut feel as to which one you think will do the best job for you.

Nigel



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 7:31:47)

Thanks so much for your suggestions dave, Donkey & Nigel!

Donkey, since I'm doing this work voluntarily for my local struggling sporting club, your suggestion re. simply putting the image into the header is a good prompt for me. Since my own very basic inkjet printer has very non-professional results it didn't occur to me to try someone else in the club who might have a better one.

Donkey, could you please explain what you mean when you say:
quote:

All you need to do is make sure that any images you use in the template are CMYK
. ?

Donkey/Dave: In Paint Shop Pro 8 I can split my image into CMYK, which gives me 4 separate black or greyish 'channel' files. (eg 'magenta' file etc) I can't make the image one CMYK image I don't think. Are you both suggesting that once I create these files, that if I have a reasonable quality printer that somehow I can 'tell' the printer to use those 4 separate CMYK files (or RGB if those colour channels used), thereby getting a more professional result?

Nigel,
Thanks again!

regards, spinningjennie



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 7:42:39)

try it just with rgb and see how it goes - save it as a tiff and use something like 300 ppi (pixels per inch, or sometimes mistakenly called dpi - dots per inch: which is *printed* resolution not image resolution)

try it with say 200ppi and 400 ppi as well and see which comes out best :)



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 8:01:25)

Thanks Dave for the speedy useful response! Yes, my original layered Paint Shop Pro file is 300 ppi & all vector based so I can easily convert it to 200 & 400 ppi to see how it goes with whichever printer I end up using.

BTW, some time ago a prof. printer that uses a 'laser' printer told me that if I used his laser printer for say a ream of letterhead, that when the paper was put back into another printer to create the actual letter to a person, that the letterhead ink would be affected & jam up the other printer. He said I would need to use a typesetter instead of him.

regards
spinningjennie



d a v e -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 8:49:33)

probably ok if you use an inkjet :)



Donkey -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 9:03:17)

quote:

I can't make the image one CMYK image
I don't know about PSP but in Corel Photopaint you can convert the whole file to a variety of formats including CMYK.

[image]local://upfiles/2371/35CE2ABA00A14A16B08FF90FE4819963.jpg[/image]



spinningjennie -> RE: Colours for professional printing? (2/28/2005 18:37:15)

Thanks again dave & Donkey!
I now see that Corel Photo Paint 8 gives you an option that Paint Shop Pro 8 doesn't. This helps me in my discussions with prof. printers.

Paint Shop's manual says: 'Although you cannot create images in Paint Shop Pro using the CMYK model, you can produce colour separations that can be printed on CMYK printers. You can split the images into CMYK channels or you can print colour separation pages. These can be used as colour plates to give to a printing service.'

regards,
spinningjennie



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