Mary Schilling recently wrote about different approaches to matching Pantone colors on production inkjet. We got an interesting note from one of our UK readers, David Albin, who suggested that forcing a color RIP to hit a particular Pantone color e.g. certain reds and oranges, can skew the gamut for complex images on CMYK printers with high chroma inks.
We thought it would be worthwhile to share the response as the folks reading our site from the broader inkjet arena, perhaps using high chroma inks on flat beds or roll plotters, or UV wide format might experience issues that David describes, as well as, skewed colors and issues with combined L*a*b* spot/RGB bitmaps and rendering intents.
However, generally in a production inkjet environment (the focus of Inkjet Insight) the chroma of the ink and using a compatible paper keeps reds and blues limited within an expected range for most combinations. So, sticking with the recommendation to start with spot colors in the design file depends on your color conversion workflow and if your RIP process allows colors assigned as L*a*b* to be processed rendering intent independent.
So many things in our complex world of machine, RIP, ink and paper can go wrong – but this is one where it’s actually more likely to go right.
Keep the ideas coming.
P.S. Think we skewed something up on a post? Let us know.