...color is a very difficult area to answer in one post, the only simple answer is to employ color management, you will find jumping into color management a real can of worms to say the least...
...printing color is very different to viewing color on a monitor, the first steps to color management are profiling your devices, your monitor, your printer, your scanner. These areas are just a small part of a color managed workflow, the other part is the printing press you are going to print on...
...no two printing presses produce color the same, this is important to remember, the same is true for printers and monitors. These elements are physical devices subject to physical and environmental influences that effect the end result...
...on a laser printer you will unlikely, if at all possible, to match a printing presses characteristics, you might come close, but this is all dependant on the profiling quality and accuracy. Not only the fact that the inks use different pigments, but also the issue of the paper stock used to print the final piece...
...it is advised you talk to your output provider to see if they can guide you with color management issues, such as providing profiles for the presses they have and on certain types of paper, coated or uncoated...
...pantone colors are a different area to deal with as opposed to cmyk printing. It is recommended you invest in a pantone color guide to visualize how pantones can be reproduced, viewing pantone colors on a monitor is far from accurate. Achieving pantone colors in cmyk can be achieved with some pantones but not all...
...so many variables in print that when you delve into this game you begin to realize how difficult color can be to deal with...
...It is advisable to stick to pantone color swatches where possible, printing these in cmyk isn't always achieveable though and digital proofers often struggle to reproduce pantones. Pantone (the company) have been changing cmyk splits of pantone colors for years now. Pantone books fade over time, pantone inks printed on different paper stocks look different and on top of all that, one printer printing in a certain pantone may end up with a slightly different result because the actual pantone books themselves aren't that consistent...
...always advisable to to get a match proof from your print provider before commiting to press, get a result you are happy to sign off...
...your print provider needs some kind of target to go by. Some jobs we have matched as best we can to are actual client ink jet proofs...
...color management is a big and often daunting area for many, the print provider will at least have a proofing device that can mimmick the printing press they use...
...some clients, with the cash, sometimes opt for wet proofs that are actually printed on the press using the actual paper, these clients however are few and far between due to huge set up costs involved...
...color management has come along way over the years, it might seem like magic but believe me, it is a huge area to deal with. Without sound investment in high quality profiling equipment producing accurate profiles, if the profiles aren't good, you can end up chasing your tail...
...on it's own a profile doesn't do much, it really does something when a conversion takes place from a source profile to a destination profile...
...in short, if you have an image from a scanner in rgb or a camera in rgb, the scanner or camera rgb profile is the source and is then converted to the press profile (cmyk) as the destination...
...for you to then print this converted image to an RGB laser printer, the source profile is the press profile, the destination is the RGB laser printer profile...
...generic profiles are ok if the device is stable, such as some inkjet printer profiles, however monitors such as CRT's are unstable devices that change from one unit to another and also over time, generic monitor profiles are useless really...
...profiles are essentially a snapshot in time of how a device behaves, if the device changes over time then the profile then becomes less accurate, meaning updating profiles is required, this is known as device drift...
..this page has many useful links about color management...
Andrew
