Inkjet Color Conundrum

Mary Schilling, an expert on color and inks, and coauthor of “The Designer’s Guide to Inkjet,” points out that issues arise when designers don’t have a consistent color space with the output device that is being targeted. Many designers use SWOP or are just oblivious — using the color space that was the default of the software. She recommends GRACoL (General Requirements for Applications in Commercial Offset Lithography), the largest color space.

Problems arise when there’s a mixture of design programs that don’t sync: For example, Adobe Photoshop using SWOP, Adobe Illustrator using GRACoL, Adobe InDesign using something else. The downfall is a mixed bag of elements that needs to be converted multiple times.

“If they are editing an image on their monitor, most designers do not keep up with maintaining their color calibration,” Schilling contends. “They go by a visual color correction; they don’t know how to go by the numbers. When they’re converted to the output color space, they’re not the colors that they expect. They’re coloring with one set of crayons and the printer is using a different set of crayons.”

Expanding on Gooding’s caveats regarding ink coverage, Schilling notes the importance of understanding what happens to a color as it’s being absorbed into the paper. A true, clean magenta or cyan, depending on the paper’s whiteness/brightness, is going to appear darker or even dingy. It’s the balance between absorption and evaporation of the aqueous inkjet.

It is incumbent upon the printer to provide the necessary education for its clients, and ostensibly, the designers. If your shop uses “house papers,” then create a catalog for your customers of different images using Pantone colors, printed at different tack levels or coverage amounts. Thus, they will have samples of how a given paper will react when married with inkjet ink.

Schilling points out that it’s equally important for the internal staff at a printing company to be fully versed in the art of inkjet printing. “If sales people don’t understand the process, don’t know how to talk the lingo or know the paper and the ink, they can’t intelligently talk to their customer about it,” she says. “They can’t answer why the color is dingy; they will just come back and say the customer doesn’t like the green.”