Colour Matching

One of the most difficult tasks involved in printing disc and packaging artwork is colour matching. Many things can affect the way that colours appear and sometimes it is not possible to reproduce your intended colours 100%. What you see on your screen is never identical to the finished printed product, and below we try to explain several of the reasons for this:

Screen vs. Print
The colours that you see on your screen are never the same as those that appear on your final printed product. A screen makes up its colours from a mix of Red, Green and Blue glowing phosphors, whereas a printer uses a blend of Cyan(C), Magenta(M), Yellow(Y) and Black(K) inks. It is even possible to get different results from different printers processing the same graphic file.

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Spot Colours vs. Process Colours
Spot colours and process colours do not match. Spot colours are specific individual colours that are put into the printing press. A maximum of 5 separate spot colours is possible, but you can include special inks such as metallics.

Process colours are made up of a mixture of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black inks and are used when printing full colour artwork (e.g. colour photographs).

If you have a mixture of spot and process colours in your artwork it must be printed with process colours, and specific spot colours used may not reproduce faithfully. Converting spot colours to process colours will always change the appearance of those colours.

The Disc Surface
Different disc surfaces react differently to the ink applied to them. For example a matt finished disc will appear different to a glossy disc. We would always recommend using a high quality disc where it is important to try to accurately reproduce colours.

As we said at the beginning it is not always possible to match your colours completely but if you follow this simple checklist you’ll be helping us to help you get the best possible results for your project.

If your artwork is to be printed in Pantones please ensure that there are no CMYK Process colours in your artwork, and specify all Pantone colours used.

Similarly if your discs are to be printed in Process colours, convert any Pantone colours that you have used to CMYK.

If a good colour match is important to you, please provide us with a printed sample so that we can match your discs to a previously printed product rather than a screen image. If you have any questions or problems at all we’d be pleased to talk them through with you. Just pick up the phone and call the Team.

Author: Doug Newman, Graphics Specialist

*Offer limited to two personalised disc print sample per customer. Available until the 23rd of December 2011.