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color matching

Misprint Monday: Pantone Sucks

Ah, Pantone, how I despise you and let me count the ways: The color guide books are expensive as hell considering how many books they sell and the fact that in our industry and others I presume they also get licensing fees for inks that match their Pantone colors. The cost means that not only…

Misprint Monday: Ink Color Substrate Issues

We recently printed some expensive UnderArmour reversible jerseys for a contract customer. It didn’t work out very well. As you can see from the photograph, on the black background the letters look “yellow” and on the white the letters look “gold.” To be more exact,  the white jersey printed at Pantone 1235c and the black…

Web Wednesday -What Color is the Dress? What does it mean for Garment Decorators?

I found the best scientific explanation of the white gold vs blue black dress debate which has been raging on social media on the Wired Magazine site. It mainly has to do with the context and adjustments your eyes make. This is just an extreme case where it falls right on the boundary of interpretation. If…

More on the Rutland “Field Trip”

On Wednesday Tom touched on the magical new Rutland automatic ink color matching dispenser. I agree with Tom wholeheartedly that it is pretty rad. Other highlights of our “field trip” to the Rutland Group were meeting the new CEO Jeff Leone and checking out the color proofing area. Jeff is a very smart guy that…

What Are We Matching?

Make sure you know what you are matching when a customer has many other printed items. The file you are working from may have color indications, but if the customer has already printed brochures (well, maybe back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth…,) billboards, beer cans, boxes, … whatever, you had better fall…

Misprint Monday – Sometimes It’s the Shirt

Discharge printing is getting more and more popular as a way to produce soft prints on soft shirts. It doesn’t always work. The process is that the discharge agent in the ink combines with water and heat to neutralize the dye in the shirt. The color of the ink then goes into the fabric and there is…