Digital Printing in Toronto: A Guide to Colour Management

Colour management is extremely important for digital printing. It ensures that the colours of a print match exactly those on your computer screen. It involves controlling and maintaining colour accuracy from the initial design phase through to the final printed output.

Accurate colour management is a must in advertising and promotion. Colours are the building blocks of a brand’s identity and a powerful tool for conveying its message. Inaccurate depictions of colours can lead to confusion and misinterpretation, potentially damaging a business’s reputation. By using accurate colours, brands can create an impactful visual identity that resonates with their target audience.

Let’s look at how digital printing companies in and around Toronto, like Micro Printing, achieve perfect colour accuracy.

5 Steps to Accurate Colour Management When Using Digital Printing for Your Toronto-Area Business

Here are some ways to get accurate colour when digital printing:

1. Setting Up the Right Kind of Equipment

Most forms of marketing-related printing in Toronto – such as posters, banners, pamphlets, and flyers – are designed digitally. This means that the selection of colours is done on a computer screen. As a result, having a high-quality display that accurately depicts colours is crucial. Flat panel displays with 4K resolution are ideal for serious graphic work, especially when it comes to creating advertising materials.

Once designed, your ads should be printed using a high-quality printer. Printing services use different kinds of high-quality printers, including inkjet printers, laser printers and wide-format printers.

2. Assigning ICC Profiles to Your Digital Images

Assigning ICC (International Colour Consortium) profiles to digital images is crucial for digital printing, as it guarantees accurate colour reproduction. ICC profiles bridge the digital image’s colours and the printer’s capabilities.

For example, if a monitor and printer have the same sRGB (standard red, green, and blue) colour range, then both will accurately display the same colours. However, if one of them has a different ICC profile, it must be converted into the other to ensure the intended colours are printed.

Digital images and graphics already come with their own ICC profiles. Therefore, before printing, it is necessary to know that the image’s colour range matches that of the printer. By matching the image’s ICC profile with the printer’s ICC profile, you can ensure that the final printed output closely resembles the original image.

3. Choosing and Setting Up the Correct Software

Adobe Photoshop provides strong colour management tools, including the ability to assign and convert ICC profiles, adjust colour settings, and preview the final printed output’s appearance. Additionally, Photoshop supports various colour spaces and file formats, making it versatile for different printing requirements. Its integration with Adobe Creative Cloud also facilitates seamless workflow between design programs like Illustrator and InDesign.

Another tool for colour management in digital printing is Lightroom. It excels as a colour management tool due to its intuitive interface, precise colour adjustment capabilities, and support for ICC profiles. Its non-destructive editing workflow allows for easy experimentation and fine-tuning of colours, ensuring accurate reproduction of hues, tones, and contrasts in printed output.

4. Checking Different Viewing Environments

Before going to printing services in Toronto with a finished ad design, check your digital image in various viewing environments. This is important for achieving accurate and consistent colours. The appearance of colours can be affected by different screens and lighting conditions. Previewing your artwork in different environments ensures that the colours look consistent and accurate across various devices and lighting situations. This can help you avoid any unpleasant or disappointing colour shifts when the image is finally printed.

5. Proofing Your Advertisement Design

When it comes to printing your images, you should ensure that the colour and print quality are exactly how you intended them to be. To do this, your printer can create proofs; these are test prints that allow you to see how your images will appear on the final product.

You can create a few different types of proofs:

• You can view a soft proof or digital PDF file on your computer or other devices. Soft proofs can give you a good idea of how your images will look when printed, but they may not be 100% accurate.
• Another option is hard proof, which is a physical printout of your image. Hard proofs can be more accurate than soft proofs but are also more expensive and time-consuming.
• The most reliable type of proof is contract proofing. This involves printing a hard copy of your image on the same printer and using the same type of paper as the final product. This lets you see exactly how your colour management and ICC profile assigning have been done.

 
Digital printing companies in Toronto take many important steps to ensure colour management is done correctly. This process includes setting up the right equipment, learning to change colour modes and profiles, and using certain software. Checking the colours in different environments and proofing them for assurance is also important. Thus, whether you are digitally printing ads for your company or posters for personal use, these steps will help you understand the process better.