Reply To: Proofing Settings When the Printer is Clueless?

As I mention in my last post, Pantone Swatches are designed to work for offset presses – not Digital Printing. Put simply, with the few exceptions I list later in this reply, your spot colours are ALWAYS going to be made from CMYK, despite the Fiery RIP attempting to do a conversion.

Printers should already have swatch books on-site, so purchasing a swatch book will only show you the target colour of a premixed ink on a final offset print using the particular spot colour. It won’t show you how the colour will look from a digital press.

Again, as I mention in my last post, colours like Orange 021, no digital printer using CMYK only will EVER get close. By “matching” colours on a digital copiers, I use this term loosely… this is what I mean: https://www.colorfulcanary.com/2013/12/nailed-it-wordless-wednesday.html

Only a few copiers can produce true spot colours in the sense that they are using a fifth unit on the machine filled with a custom colour. Such copiers/printers are the HP Indigo; Kodak Nexpress; or Xerox iGen (apologies if I’ve missed any makes/models). These digital copiers have the ability to run spot channels through them IF the inks are made for the machine and IF the printer has chosen to use this method. And HP Indigo is the ONLY digital exception to the rule in that it DOES use ink rather than dry toner.

TL;DR – You’re setting yourself up for failure by using Pantone Inks on digital prints. Instead, get your printer to print these pages https://docs-hoffmann.de/swatch22112002.pdf and then choose the colours from these pages based on the CMYK values given on the colours.