Colour Your Worlde

Artisan Colour, Inc. announces the opening of an East Coast office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Artisan Colour was founded in April 1998 with a mission to provide our color separation clients with industry-leading quality pre-press services.  Our state of the art production facility in Scottsdale, Arizona has been expanded twice in the last 10 years to include a Digital Photographic Studio and Large Format Display Graphic Division. Now, with the addition of an East Coast office our expert staff is poised to fulfill clients needs nationwide.

The East Coast office will be managed by Fred Chaboya, who has over twenty-five years of experience in the pre-press industry. Artisan's East Coast office will better connect clients with the Scottsdale, Arizona based company. "We are dedicated to providing exceptional service to our East Coast clients, and the opening of our new office confirms that commitment. Our goal at Artisan Colour has always been about providing customized solutions for discerning brands. With the addition of our East Coast office we will provide a strong touch-point between our clients to our production team in Scottsdale."

For more information, contact:

Fred Chaboya
Artisan Colour, Inc.
1271 Fawnwood Drive
Lancaster, PA   17601
480-861-2813
Fred@artisancolour.com

A common question asked by customers prepping their files for printing in our Display Graphics division, is "Should I send you the files in RGB or CMYK?". When we respond RGB, many people are confused since several of our machines print with CMYK inks. The answer to this question, along with best file practices and in-depth technical information for all of Adobe's CS5 Creative Suite has been complied in this reference guide. To help both sides of the counter speak the same language, and ensure the file printed is exactly how it was intended to look.

Thanks, John for posting!

If you are printing to an inkjet printer or other RGB-based device, you will likely achieve the best results by printing from an RGB image. Despite the fact that these devices use inks named cyan, magenta, yellow and black (often with additional colors such as orange, green, light cyan, light magenta, etc.), they are set up to maximize the wider gamut available in RGB images by converting incoming RGB information to appropriate values for the color gamut of the printing device. The colorants in inkjet inks actually allow a wider range of colors than offset inks: Printing from an image in the smaller CMYK color space limits the output. For detailed guidance, consult the user guide and online resources available from the manufacturer of the device.

This Photoshop tutorial explains some of the basics what we work with here at Artisan every day - color. The video covers the principals behind RGB and CMYK color modes and bit map depth. Some great tips for newbies or refresher course for pros.

We've been having fun with this quiz around the shop. Maybe we are just color fanatics, but it is interesting to see how you score. This color quiz was put together by X-Rite Photo, the makers of color management and calibration software and equipment. The lower the number, the better your score, and the better you can perceive color. How well you can see color?

Color IQ Test

Take this fun and simple on-line color IQ test and learn how you see color. You’ll get more accurate results if you have a calibrated and profiled monitor. Share the color IQ test with your friends and colleagues!

Color consistency is key; in design, when building brand recognition, in conveying your message, for graphic output...the list goes on and on. The Pantone system is the recognized industry standard of color matching. Having that language of color translated and organized has be come an invaluable resource to a number of businesses, including shops like ourselves who deal in accurate color representation every day.

This video gives a behind the scenes look at the Pantone process. The video was made by Base in conjunction with the release of The Plus Series, the next generation of the classic Pantone Matching System. The Plus series added 566 new colors to their matching system, a total of 5,024 in their library.

We spend a great deal of time crafting the color of our client's images before they go to press for catalogs and magazine print ads. The process of printing that type of media is done with a four color press, which can present new color challenges. We will often work directly with the printers to ensure that the color remains consistent before the before the run is released.

Since printers also need to maintain consistent results it is imperative that the basis of their process be accurate - the ink. This video by The Printing Ink Company illustrates how ink is created, quality controlled, and color is manipulated. If you ever wondered what it takes to get the color you picked out on screen to represent in your printed material, this video will help you understand all the elements that come in to play to get the final result.

Having a calibrated monitor is essential when color correcting and editing digital images. The setting where the computer is located can be equally as important to ensure your eyes are perceiving that color correctly.

You're favorite color may be red, but that is a bad choice for a wall color where you do your editing. So is bright florescent light or a near by window. For precise color image editing the most effective work space is a specially designed darkened room where the overall illumination is lower than the brightness of your computer monitor.

To create the ideal "digital darkroom" you must consider the lighting levels and color tone of the entire room. To begin with, windows should be either heavily shaded from outdoor lighting or omitted outright to maintain a constant level of illumination throughout the work day. Next, to prevent ambient conditions from affecting human color perception, daylight-balanced D50 (or 5,000º Kelvin) fluorescent or filtered halogen lamps should be used for illumination. Ideally, walls and ceilings should be painted a neutral gray. If possible, even flooring, countertops, and monitor faceplates should be a neutral color. If the conditions for editing and viewing digital images are not rigidly controlled, the most subtle changes in color, brightness, and contrast displayed on a computer monitor may be impossible for the human eye to distinguish.

Following recommended standard viewing conditions can ensure not only accuracy in color imaging, but also consistency. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) publishes two extensive guidelines pertaining to the graphic industry. ISO 3664:2009 is for viewing conditions for the graphic technology and photographic industry - when the digital image files are displayed on a computer monitor in isolation, independent of any form of hard copy. ISO 12646:2008 is designed for setting up a workstation that will be used for comparing digital image files to a printed output - from soft proof to hard copy. These publications cover all aspects of room lighting environmental surfaces.


It may require a little bit of an investment to acquire the right types of lighting and setting up your workspace properly. Ultimately the result can save you time and money by knowing that you are accurately viewing and color correcting your images.

There are many products on the market inspired by Pantone's color matching system. These items would make a color perfect addition to your home, as a fashion accessory, or gift for any designer or color fanatic.

Some are produced by Pantone themselves, like these birch veneer stools. The first twenty orders of their limited edition series will even be signed by Pantone founder Lawrence Herbert.


These eyeglasses come with a set of interchangeable color stems to suit your mood.

Pantone paints are available in over 3,000 colors, make picking colors to remodeling your house as reliable as flipping through a Pantone swatch book.

While many things can be fixed in post production, having the right exposure from the beginning can free up time spent in the computer after a shoot for focusing on techniques like stylizing your image. Guaranteeing you have the right exposure is as easy as making sure you have the proper white balance setting for your environment. A well exposed image, with out a doubt, makes for a better print.

Today's display graphics are no longer considered just a sign. Very often the graphics we print for our customers in the Retail Market are thought of as art by their shoppers.

Here at Artisan Colour, color management is religion! The two pillars that we live by are accuracy and consistency. Our ability to replicate colors to the highest standard is a daily task. So often Retail Graphics Buyers demand that product colors in the graphics match the merchandise. Easier said than done, eh? A number of our readers have expressed frustration when trying to produce a certain color to match a brand or product where the slightest shift spells disaster. In the print graphics field we spell disaster W-A-S-T-E!

The other pillar of color management is consistency. Have you ever had a job come in where the client is requesting different applications for the same campaign? Using multiple printers on different substrates can seem like an insurmountable task when the goal is to be consistent through out the entire campaign.

In this month's edition of Wide-Format Imaging Marc Welch describes how science has aided color management in image editing and producing uniform and precise color output no matter what devise is used.

How it's Done

The workflow is quite simple:

The first step shuts off color management on all RIPs. The RIPs will receive color-managed files, so they do not need to perform this function. However, the RIP still performs basic printer to media calibration for each media type. This involves printing a tone scale for each color, and making adjustments to optimize the match between requested and printed values. Once calibration is complete, the device is linearized.

The final step is creating a reference or “fingerprint” of the printer or press. A reference chart is printed and ‘read’ with a spectrophotometer. This allows the software to understand both what colors your printer can reproduce as well as how it produces them. Good color management software takes the printer color output, compares it to a preferred standard (GRACoL, for example) and creates a link to correlate the printer’s color capabilities to the color standard. Printers with a broader range of colors (gamut) support a better match to the color standard or original color being matched.

With the right software and training, you can deal with special circumstances. For example, some customers print the backside of polycarbonate then laminated over the print with a white film. The resulting color gamut is considerably smaller than GRACoL. In this type of case it is possible to compress the input color range to fit the available gamut.

....What once required a time-consuming, difficult to teach, and often inconsistent skill has become an efficient, productive process. Both you and your customers will take notice.