In the last post, we discussed the difference between additive and subtractive color. This time, we will talk a little bit more about subtractive color, and what Casey Printing does to help make sure that your print job looks like it should.

In the last post we talked about how with subtractive color, white light hits an object, and all of the colors except for the one that you see are absorbed. In a perfect world, the color that you see would always look the same. Unfortunately there are many environmental factors that can affect this. These factors can be as simple as clouds or fog if you are outside.

Indoors you face a whole different ballgame with artificial light because you cannot get white light from a light bulb. When light that is not white hits an object, you do not see the same color that you would if you did have white light. If you shine a light that is not very blue on a blue object, then the object will absorb all of the light that isn’t blue and reflect only the blue that is projected on the object. The color that you see will be a blackish blue.

Case in point: You get up early in the morning to make an early meeting when it is still dark. You get dressed and grab a couple socks to put on. The both look black. Some time later when you are in better light you discover that you are really wearing a black sock and a blue sock. This is because the there was not enough blue light to see that the sock was blue.

This can be a problem in printing plants where inconsistent lighting temperatures make jobs look different in different parts of the shop as well as in people’s homes. To solve the problem, the International Standards Organization (ISO) now dictates that the standard color temperature is 5000k. This way if you have a 5000k light in your office and I have one in my office, an identical magazine, book or brochure will actually look identical.

Casey Printing recognizes this problem and does many things to help your product look good. As a part of a recent lighting upgrade, installed 5000k lighting throughout our production facility ensuring color consistency throughout our entire production process. We also have a very advanced color management system, managed by Kodak. We have generated color profiles (sort of a fingerprint for a press) which are applied to files when we generate proofs so that we can use a large format ink-jet printer to show you what your project will look like when it is finished.