Using customer-supplied proofs: Will you use it?

It is not uncommon for a printer to receive customer-supplied proofs. Most of the time we are handed off colorful materials that we know we could not match in our machines.

Sadly, many press owners would simply accept such proofs without hesitation and then tell the press operators to match it.

The pressman would only complain and report the problem once he could not make a good match. This is too late since time and money has already been wasted.

What would you do if you were given proofs that you think aren't representative of your printing condition? Would you still accept it? And if not, what do you tell the customer?

From my experience, there is no such thing as a perfect color match, perhaps very close and almost the same, but not quite exact because there are just too many factors to consider.

If the budget allows it and I really want to get the job, I would be willing to run a color proof using my stock and equipment and show it to my customer for his approval. From experience, this always worked for me. Honesty always does.

I find this question quite interesting: Somebody asked, if they have a color management implementation how can they emulate a pantone color swatch? For example if a Pantone color consists of 10C and 40M, how will they be able to reproduce this in Illustrator since they are using ICC profiles?

Doctor Blade wrote:

I find this question quite interesting: Somebody asked, if they have a color management implementation how can they emulate a pantone color swatch? For example if a Pantone color consists of 10C and 40M, how will they be able to reproduce this in Illustrator since they are using ICC profiles?

This is easy with i1 Pro and ProfileMaker's Color Picker tool. Just choose which ICC profile that represents your press. Measure the swatch with the device. It will give the suggested CMYK numbers along with a Delta E score. As a rule of thumb for saturated colors try to get a Delta E of <3. If it's neutral or pastel colors, then try aiming for <2. If the readings are higher than these the colors won't be accurately produced on the press. The CMYK values can be saved as a color palette and can now be imported in Photoshop or Illustrator.