color – Page 2 – ImageBlog

April 13, 2012

Mixing Ink – the Pantone Recipe for Print

Twitter uses a specific blue – not the same as Facebook blue, or Ford blue, or “Big Blue” IBM. Coke always wants the same red, whether its on a T-shirt, paper, plastic, a television screen or a glass bottle. To reproduce color consistently, especially across different media, platforms, techonologies and visual arenas, everyone needs to be communicating in the same language of color, so to speak. The PANTONE® Matching System is that language – an industry standard and means of selecting, communicating, reproducing, matching and controlling colors. For offset, lithographic printing, Pantone created a Color Formula Guide with well over 1000 classified colors that fill the CMYK gamut. From a set of basic inks, each of these colors can be mixed.

For spot color printing, the Pantone Guide contains ink mixing instrusctions for each color, a “recipe” with amounts given both in parts and percentages. If a printer needs a large quantity of ink, or is doing regular printing for clients who use a specific color for their brand, these inks will be purchased premixed. But for smaller quantities, each color in the Pantone Guide can be created with a mixture of 2 or more of 14 standard base colors. They are: Yellow, Yellow 012, Orange 021, Warm Red, Red 032, Rubine Red, Rhodamine Red, Purple, Violet, Blue 072, Reflex Blue, Process Blue, Green, and Black.

In the image above, our printer is mixing PMS 151 Orange for a client’s job. The formula for that exact color is 12 parts of PANTONE Yellow (or 75%) and 4 parts of PATNONE Warm Red (or 25%). For this small amount of ink needed, he weighs each ink amount on a scale and then mixes thoroughly together for the correct color match, which is then tested alongside the PANTONE preprinted swatch for that color to doublecheck the outcome.

Pantone recently unveiled their cloud system of color management, PANTONELive: “a cloud-based color bank.” It is a color management system for companies and brand owners who do marketing over a large variety of media and across a diverse geographical area to ensure everyone is speaking that same color language.

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

February 28, 2012

Printing 101: What is Spot or Two-Color Printing?

Too often as printers, we assume everyone else understands the basics of print technology. Full color, spot color, process, digital, offset, thermography, letterpress, wide format… there are many paths to create a beautiful and effective printed product – decisions have to be made about which path is the best to take. The type of printing you need for your project should take into account many factors: budget, branding concerns, time constraints, intended use, and essentially the overall scope of your marketing plan. It becomes important that you have a printer you can communicate with freely and clearly. Your printer should be able to explain your options clearly. One basic topic in looking at the options for color printing is to understand what is meant by spot colors vs. full color.

Spot color refers to color generated in offset printing by a single ink. That ink could be a “pure” color or mixed according to a formula. Process, or 4-color printing, uses four spot colors to generate a full-color gamut: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK). Some more advanced processes use six spot colors, adding Orange and Green to provide an even larger gamut. This is called hexachromatic process printing, or CMYKOG. At times, however, you may want to print using just one or two colors – for example let’s say blue and black. This is a classic example of two color printing.

Pantone is clearly the authority on color – a provider of color systems and leading technology for accurate communication of color. The Pantone Matching System has long been the standard for defining “spot colors.” If you have a blue lion in your logo, you want that lion to always appear in the same shade of blue – not sky blue on your letterhead, royal blue on an employee’s shirt and some shade of purple on the website. The PMS system is a way to standardize that color for the printing process, and your printer can show you swatches to select the PMS number that you can then define as an integral part of your brand. Also keep in mind that with these two colors, you can enhance the design of your piece by using “screens” or tints of those colors. 50% of black gives gray; a percentage of the PMS blue will provide varying shades as well. With a good design, a two-color printed piece can have much depth and style. (Pantone is a rich resource for all topics on color. Check out which color they chose Color of the Year for 2012.)

Any PMS color, printed from a single ink, can also be translated into the closest CMYK match. Your blue lion can be printed by the 4-color process method when you choose to create a full color piece. There will be a slight variation in the shade or hue of the blue, however – no PMS to CMYK conversion is exact. In most cases, the difference is tolerable or even unoticeable, but with a few colors the shift is more dramatic. The CMYK gamut can not replicate all colors visible to the human eye. Again, your printer can show you side-by-side swatches of what the PMS color will look like once converted to CMYK. Some brands are so specific about their color that they budget for 5-color offset print jobs where full color printing is needed, but they are willing to pay for another pass to get the PMS color of that lion exactly right every time.

Have the discussion with your printer to learn the process they are using to produce your print materials. They can explain about color gamuts, PMS color matches, and even color psychology and selection. You will also want to translate these colors for other uses such as your website or online marketing. There you will need web-safe color matches that seek to maintain an accurate match for your blue lion on the web as well. You will be in good hands with a printer who can help you with both the artistic, creative process and the technical concerns of production.

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

January 16, 2012

Think Big, Print Big: Wide Format Banners, Posters & More

Big ideas, big dreams, big plans? Then you need big printing. Large, glossy, full-color wide format is increasingly a smart marketing choice for making a bold, clear statement. Think about the visual impact you could make in your business with banners, adhesive wall clings, car wraps, event signage, posters, window graphics, floor graphics. High quality design and signage is now affordable for every budget and versatile for every structure or medium. It is also easy to change up to reflect new information and stayfresh in the public eye.

Take a moment to look around at any of your large blank walls, windows or spaces in any public area of your business and you begin to realize how that visual canvas is not being utilized to represent your brand, your message, your mission. It is being seen… it should be getting noticed and remembered! And not all wall coverings need to be advertising copy or photography. Perhaps you can simply use shape and color to “brand” your walls or windows for visual interest, keeping them in accordance with your brand’s palette.

Consider what might very well be your most valuable advertising real estate: storefront windows, waiting room and lobby walls, even shop floors. They are encountered by every customer or client, and even others just passing by – you should be using that marketing opportunity to relay your message and reinforce your brand. When you start looking around you will discover many creative ways to use large-format printing:

banners
removable vinyl wall graphics & murals
car wraps
event signage
posters
floor graphics
window clings
mounted trade show displays
sale announcements or information
directional signage
product exhibits
decorative designs and murals to compliment your brand

Thinking big will grow your business and sales in the new year, and wide format printing is a versatile, affordable and smart component of that winning marketing strategy. It allows you to see your your business with an artist’s or architect’s eye. Enjoy being creative with your marketing.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

December 28, 2011

Versatile Vinyl Makeover: Removable Wall Murals

Removable vinyl wall murals and wide-format graphics can recreate your office, showroom, factory or store. Custom wall murals, window graphics, even floor and ceiling graphics: take a look at some of the images below as an inspiration to what you can accomplish in your business or even home setting. These products are removable, repositionable, durable and fade resistant. Inspire your staff with a visually stunning workspace, or promote your brand in an eye-catching, innovative way that will position you for greater success in 2012. Call us to talk about this easy, affordable way to give your workplace a whole new attitude!

(ImageSmith Communications makes no claim to ownership of the images below. Click on the images to visit their original websites and view their ownership.)

Floor Graphics, Wide Format Print — Floor graphics can be visually stunning and useful, even in a warehouse or industrial setting. Form and function. The use of text as design is very effective in these examples, as they combine both the instructional intent of the signage with a visual aesthetic that intrigues and pleases the viewer.

Vinyl wall murals — Make a memorable impression on the walls of your lobby, showroom or workplace with full color, vinyl murals that reinforce your brand.

Vinyl Window Graphic Perforated — Perforated Vinyl Window Graphics take advantage of your most valuable, and probably underused advertising real estate… your lobby or store windows. They are removable, UV protected and can be visually stunning.

Vinyl, removable ceiling mural graphic — If you’re inspired by Michaelangelo, a ceiling mural takes advantage of some more prime real estate.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

December 14, 2011

Pantone’s 2012 Color of the Year is Tangerine Tango

Each December, Pantone chooses a “color of the year.” As the Pantone Matching System is used across all creative industries as a color standard, the annual selection has come to be influential for many designers and is chosen with careful consideration to the marketplace and overall consumer culture of the day. The color this year? Tangerine Tango (no, not reddish-orange!)

Pantone says the vibrant color “provide(s) the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward.” They call it “sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive.”

The selection of a bright, high visibility hue is consistent with current trends in fashion and design that rely on loud, warm color choices over muted or more conservative ones. We’ve written in this blog before about “color psychology” which defines perceptions of orange as energetic but balanced, inviting, and best employed to give the feeling of movement and energy without being overpowering. Does PMS 7625C do it for you? Visit the Pantone website to download the color palettes for Adobe applications and begin to make reddish-orange… uh, Tangerine Tango… the star of your next marketing campaign.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

July 27, 2011

5 Reasons to Love the Vector Version of Your Logo

Yes… you need a vector version of your logo! You may not be able to place or use it in a Word document, but for any high quality printing or output (or for spot or “2-color” printing) you should insist your designer supply you with the vector logo. Preferably, it will be the way your logo was originally created, and you will not have to pay or struggle to convert it from a pixel-based image after it has already become an integral part of your brand. Here are the reasons why:

Vector artwork can be scaled to any size needed and maintain its perfect clarity. They have crisp edges at any size as they are based on mathematical formulas rather than a bed of pixels.
They maintain a clear, transparent background when placed over other artwork or elements in your design. PNG files also have this ability but are pixel based so… (see reason #1)
They can function either in RGB or CMYK color modes as well as carry spot color definitions. You can select exact PMS color matches so that your brand is always reproduced consistently. While there are methods to include spot color information in a pixel-based file (DCS files from PhotoShop with spot color channels) they are, again, not resizeable and do not include easy trap information for printing.
You can easily switch a vector logo to a pixel-based file (.TIF, .JPG, .PNG, etc.) for manipulation, web use or other instances… but it is difficult and sometimes impossible to travel from pixel to vector in a satisfactory manner.
This last reason can be debatable and I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but: as most logos need to be clean, vivid and memorable, vector shapes readily lend themselves to these qualities. The logos you know and remember are almost always designed as vector shapes rather than fuzzy, artistic brushstrokes or photographic effects.

WARNING: pixel-based files can be saved as EPS files, but be aware that just because it has an EPS suffix it has not been magically converted to a vector file. Also, pixel images can be placed into vector draw programs like Illustrator and saved as .AI or .EPS files. Again, not vector!

both of these images are .EPS files, but the one on the left is pixellated. The one on the right is a true vector logo.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, high impact graphics and marketing solutions.

July 12, 2011

When printed halftone screen angles conflict, THAT’S A “MOIRÉ”!

You have encountered moiré (pronounced ‘more-ray’) patterns many times and perhaps not known the term for what you were witnessing. When a television is photographed or videotaped, those annoying interference patterns and running lines are a moiré effect. If you have ever seen a person on television wearing a striped or patterned piece of clothing and it appears to undulate or move in a strange optical illusion – that is a moiré as well (specifically called “strobing”). The moiré appears whenever two grids are overlaid at a conflicting angle, or if they have differing mesh sizes.

Moiré samples — Left: Overlapping concentric lines create a moiré effect. Center: a scan of an offset printed photo reveals a repeating pattern effect or moiré, rather than a smooth color. Right: The 'rosette' dot pattern created by overlying halftone screen angles.

In the world of offset print and graphics, moiré patterns arise in two main ways. First, and most commonly, when a preprinted image is scanned, interference occurs between the ruling of the dot pattern of the original print and the scanner’s sample pattern. Filters can be used during the scan process to “descreen” the result and minimize the moiré, however it is always best in printing to avoid scans of pre-printed pieces for your artwork. Even descreening results in a less sharp image, and a ‘softer’ or fuzzier appearance.

Second, and less common thanks to Raster Image Processors (RIPs) and their digital control over imaging, are the moiré patterns than can occur when the four screen angles used in offset printing conflict. Each color in 4-color process printing is screened into a pattern of dots, and then angled differently to form a full color image. A standard set of screen angles to avoid a moiré is 105° cyan, 75° magenta, 90° yellow and 45° black, although the visibility of moiré is not always predictable, with some images exhibiting a moiré where others do not.

A great way to see how a moiré pattern works is to check out the demos at mathematik.com and mathworld.com. For a great explanation about screen angles and halftone patterns, be sure and read the Quality in Print blog.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, high impact graphics and marketing solutions.

July 1, 2011

Rich Blacks – 6 Ways to Define Black in Print

Just as colors vary from the natural world to your monitor to print (see Color Printing 101: the RBG & CMYK Gamuts), black is never JUST black. Rich Black, Cool Black, Warm Black, “Plain” Black, “Designer’s Black”…. each has their own reason for being. It is important to know them all, because on your computer monitor they all appear exactly alike!

Below are the standard compositions for some varieties of black used in the printing world.

Using these wisely will enrich your design and allow you a spectrum of black to use for different effects. While designers use rich black for visual effect, printers occasionally rely on rich black to solve trapping issues when text is printed over a colored background. It can hide slight misregistration of plates that would otherwise result in a small gap in color.

In the RGB world of your monitor’s display, black (um… ‘pure’ black?) is composed of R0, G0, B0 (no light is emitted from any of the three channels). Regardless of how you define black for printing purposes, it will be rendered this way on your monitor and thus appear the same – a fact that has caused many bad results over the years. Photoshop has contributed to this with the fact that the “Fill with Black” command defines black as C100, M100, Y100, K100. The image you are working with may have a black area that will match perfectly onscreen, but once printed you will see the difference in your black and the rich black Photoshop used in the fill areas.

Left: on your monitor, a .jpg logo may appear fine, but Right: once printed you see Plain vs. Rich Black

Many times we have seen, for example, a .jpg or .tif logo with a black background placed onto a larger black background in a page layout program – onscreen the result if fine, but once printed you immediately notice the marked difference between the logo area and the black box onto which it was placed.

The use of rich black or its variants can enrich printed graphics, but remember that too much ink coverage on certain papers can create other unintended problems, especially when used over large areas of coverage:

damage to lower quality papers
problems with ink drying times
ink offsetting onto the sheet above or below
increased costs of production.

Always consult your print provider for guidelines or concerns.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, high impact marketing solutions.

June 22, 2011November 13, 2019

Color Printing 101: the RGB & CMYK gamuts

The science behind color itself is at the heart of printing – and key to meeting the expectations you have for a beautifully printed project. The first step in understanding the boundaries of printable color is to know that the human eye can detect much more color than is possible for your computer monitor to display. In turn, your monitor can show more colors than it is possible to reproduce in offset printing.

The best illustration of this is a color gamut comparison chart where you can actually see the ‘real estate’ involved in each spectrum. (It’s always seemed odd to me that we use this illustration either on a printed page or a monitor… both of which are limiting the actual colors they are trying to represent!) In the figure below, the entire color shape represents all the visible spectrum of light.

Color spectrum - RGB & CMYK gamuts — Color Gamut Comparison

The RBG color area represents the specific wavelengths of light your monitor emits, and is clearly a much smaller area. Even smaller is the CMYK gamut showing colors that can be reproduced with printing inks. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow pigments (K or Black is added to create depth, definition and ensure a true black color) work as filters that subtract certain wavelengths of light and reflect others. They combine to create a spectrum of printable color.

Switching a file from RGB to CMYK in PhotoShop on your screen can visually show you the color shift that occurs when you switch to a more restrictive gamut. Try it on a random image and see if you notice a significant loss of color. Some printers prefer you leave your images in RBG mode with ICC profiles attached, while others prefer you go ahead and switch to CMYK mode, as that will inevitably happen before the printing process.

Most cameras and scanners capture color in RGB mode (or to get even more technical, the “sRGB” mode, or a standard definition of what colors can be shown on a computer monitor, as opposed to all the RGB colors that can be seen visually with reflective light). Some cameras have the aRGB (AdobeRGB) definition or a selection called “Raw” – it can capture more colors digitally than you will be able to see, but may be helpful when you edit and adjust your photographs in an editing program such as PhotoShop.

Printing methods are able to reproduce only a certain gamut of colors as well. When files contain colors that fall outside of that gamut, the RIP process must decide what to do with those colors – i.e., how to alter them in specific ways to make them become a color which is printable – and this is decided by the Rendering Intent options of the RIP software or printer driver. Rendering intents are mathematical formulas that alter out-of-gamut colors in predefined ways.

When an exact color match is needed on your print project, consider using a spot color ink in your design. Metallic inks also can give a great effect that isn’t possible with combinations of just the 4-color process inks. Paper or media choice will also affect and enhance the quality of printed colors.

Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, high impact marketing solutions.

June 1, 2011

The Psychology of Color: What Do Colors “Mean”?

Color choice in design – whether you are painting a bedroom or developing a brand – involves a critical set of decisions that can easily lead your project astray. As in most things, some people have a talent for choosing color – its appropriate use, mixing and matching with other colors, varying hues and shades to create a desired effect – and they can do it intuitively. But for the rest of us, there is help – lots of it – in making color selections based on the security of a more scientific approach, or at least a time-tested one.

Color Choice for Print, Web, Marketing projects — Good color selection for any project is critical to its success.

Please don’t choose a color for your website or print project based on the fact that you like green. It’s great to like green… but it may not be the most effective choice for the brand you are illustrating or effect you are hoping to create. Also, any color on the color wheel has an almost unlimited variation of hue and saturation that can take a warm color into the cool spectrum and a happy color into melancholy! The choice of secondary colors in your palette can also disturb or enhance the effect you are creating and must be selected with all of this in mind. A lot of things to think about – right?

Two great resources to get you thinking about what your color selection might convey: check out Andy Crofford’s infographic at TechKing.com for a beautiful illustration of the color spectrum and how each stop along the way can best be used in design and what it represents.

Another great infographic is from Kissmetrics.com, explaining how color selection affects purchasing among consumers.

Here’s a brief framework of color psychology basics (at least on the positive side – with changes in hue and saturation, these colors can take on societally defined negative connotations as well):

White: clarity, openness, simplicity
Black: power, elegance, mystery
Gray: calm, a conservative approach
Brown: stability, hearth & home
Blue: dependability, security
Purple: wealth, nobility, creativity
Green: balance, rejuvenation, spring
Yellow: happiness, light, energy
Orange: energetic, warm, autumn
Red: passion, aggression, fire

Bear in mind, these are attributes Western society attaches to these colors. Many marketers have found out the hard way that these do not always hold consistent cross-culturally!

A great resource for developing a palette of colors to work with on any project is Adobe Color CC (formerly kuler) – built directly into InDesign and accessed with the Color Theme Tool. You can create various color themes with a simple click on any photo or artwork, add them to your swatches or export them into Creative Cloud Apps.

If your issue is the color paper you are printing on, Neenah Paper has both an app and an online Paper Selector to help.