On Jan 1, 2010, at 9:32 PM, Lavolta Press wrote:
For one thing, it's Pantone who recommends that the swatches be
replaced every year. I'm only on my third Pantone fan, and I've
been working with them for 15 years. When I've replaced them I've
compared the old and new swatches. They don't fade to speak of
unless you leave the swatches open on your desk when you are not
using them, and obviously, the solution is keep them in a closed
drawer. It may not matter to you if your employer is paying for
them. And as far as production costs go, using a fan for several
years instead of one doesn't save much money. Still, it can be done.
It's a matter of professional tools vs the need for them, and
how precise does a costumer want to be with color. Design studios and
printers may well replace their pantone books every year. These days
many projects do colors with a CMYK build (instead of custom mixed
ink), and the CMYK can vary on press. When dealing with corporate
identity colors, it's an expensive mistake to have to reprint. Other
projects won't be as persnickety, so a slight color shift due to
aging or fading in the swatchbook won't have an impact.
Do you know what the fabric printing and dyeing industry uses for
swatch books? Do they use Pantone or something else?
I don't know about professional fabric printing. The on-demand
printing (such as Spoonflower) seem to be working it out with the
efforts of users. This blog
http://blog.mammamadedesigns.com/archive/2008/08/13/spoonflower-
fabric-development-series-5-color-calibration-part-c.aspx
has a color chart, shown as RGB (at the bottom of the page) and as
printed fabric (at the top). Even taking into consideration the
differences in photos, you can see some colors are different.
Here is a more direct example of some color shifts:
http://blog.mammamadedesigns.com/archive/2008/07/18/spoonflower-
fabric-development-series-5-color-calibration-part-b.aspx
See how the green stems turned out the same color as the green field.
This is the chart from Spoonflower:
http://blog.spoonflower.com/files/spoonflower_color_chart.tif
Where they removed a chunk of colors that tend to shift. And while
they removed reds, I was seeing changes in blues and greens in the
Mamamade example.
The Mamamade blog goes through a lot of color information.
Something I can imagine happening — say we have a vintage
garment that's a print fabric that we want to repro. So we scan the
fabric and then correct for any fading or yellowing. That's not
enough, the colors also need to be redone to allow for the shift.
Also subtle differences in color may not come out, such as in the
calibration example. What if the fabric I want is a multitone madder
print — some tones will come out the same.
The PMS book or other color match system is not going to help
here. The costumer needs to get color swatches of fabric printed on
the actual intended fabric, on the machine that will be used. Luckily
it's available.
Also once calibrated, a user could also calibrate her monitor
to more closely match what she will get from Spoonflower. It can be
set up as a profile so I could toggle between that and a traditional
color profile, to change back & forth depending on the project.
-Carol
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