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  • Tolerances for color shift in printed pieces?

    #1
    What's the standard tolerances that you guys will accept on printed pieces? We are getting rid of one of our main printing suppliers because their tolerance is ±5 ∆E, which I think is way too much. I'm rewriting our printing specifications and suggesting a ∆E tolerance of ±2.

    Curious to see what specs/tolerances you guys that work in or buy printing have...
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  • #2
    My current job could care less (lol) but the place I worked at before them was ±5 ∆E. They are they only place that I've had experience with that cared that much. The ironic thing is the company I work for currently is an ISO 9001 company and they don't color match unless asked/payed to.

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    • #3
      I have some clients that don't allow any DeltaE. Gotta match that Pantone chip.
      Others just need the color in the ballpark and a DeltaE of 5 doesn't bother them.
      It depends on the client.
      Cosmo, are you going Gracol7?

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      • #4
        We aren't. We don't do offset printing in the shop. We do a lot of flexographic printing, but nothing process color. We buy our litho sheets from outside vendors. We've been looking into similar certifications for flexo printing, but we haven't made any decisions there yet.

        One of the ones we're looking at is G7 certified. We're getting away from the one we have now that has a ±5 tolerance because that's way too much. We got a job in from them that was printed in mostly a CMYK blue. The colors were so far off you could see the difference from across the room.

        I'm hoping a total shift of ±2 will work. We have a big national client who is very color picky and they said they would accept ±2 for their job. Until recently we haven't had any specifications that we sent to suppliers other than "match this color".

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Ang View Post
          My current job could care less (lol) but the place I worked at before them was ±5 ∆E. They are they only place that I've had experience with that cared that much. The ironic thing is the company I work for currently is an ISO 9001 company and they don't color match unless asked/payed to.
          ISO 9001 doesn't truly have a bearing on quality, it has more to do with consistency, process and tracking. For example a widget factory could be ISO 9001 and they could produce the lowest quality widgets around as long as they follow the same process and track it.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by kemingMatters View Post
            ISO 9001 doesn't truly have a bearing on quality, it has more to do with consistency, process and tracking. For example a widget factory could be ISO 9001 and they could produce the lowest quality widgets around as long as they follow the same process and track it.
            Yeah. We're ISO certified, and we just had an audit a couple months ago. Basically all they want is for us to document and track our processes. They don't care what kind of work we put out.

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            • #7
              G7 has some interesting characteristics. I'm not a fan of all of them when applied to Wide Format (Nazdar and the SGIA seem to be trying to push it).
              But in regular press printing it could have some advantages.

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              • #8
                Most of us start to percieve color shifts at ∆3, so +/- 2 is a reasonable standard to hold for a printer. ∆5+/- is a HUGE shift.

                And + ∆2 or the begining of the run and - ∆2 at the end will still fall within your spec, you will see the color shift when you compare(because it will be ∆4 difference) them but it measures out.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Cisco1 View Post
                  Most of us start to percieve color shifts at ∆3, so +/- 2 is a reasonable standard to hold for a printer. ∆5+/- is a HUGE shift.

                  And + ∆2 or the begining of the run and - ∆2 at the end will still fall within your spec, you will see the color shift when you compare(because it will be ∆4 difference) them but it measures out.
                  We're hoping for an overall tolerance of 2, so ±1 from baseline. Not sure if we can hold them to that, but ideally that would be good. I can see a 1.25-1.5 shift in some colors. Others it takes a lot more for me to see it.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Cosmo View Post
                    We're hoping for an overall tolerance of 2, so ±1 from baseline. Not sure if we can hold them to that, but ideally that would be good. I can see a 1.25-1.5 shift in some colors. Others it takes a lot more for me to see it.
                    Unless you are willing to pay a super premium, I don't think you will find many - if any - printers willing to accept work on +/- 1 baseline.
                    just my opinion but I would never bid with a spec that tight and we have all the bells and whistles on our presses but that is tight.

                    You have a super eye for color with that kind of vision....can you see through buildings?

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Cisco1 View Post
                      Unless you are willing to pay a super premium, I don't think you will find many - if any - printers willing to accept work on +/- 1 baseline.
                      just my opinion but I would never bid with a spec that tight and we have all the bells and whistles on our presses but that is tight.

                      You have a super eye for color with that kind of vision....can you see through buildings?
                      Four of the five suppliers we have talked to in the past week say that they can hold ±2 overall (±1 from baseline) no problem, and two of them do it as standard practice.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by kemingMatters View Post
                        ISO 9001 doesn't truly have a bearing on quality, it has more to do with consistency, process and tracking. For example a widget factory could be ISO 9001 and they could produce the lowest quality widgets around as long as they follow the same process and track it.
                        Yeah ISO 9001 isn't quality specific, but most companies that achieve this standard are also quality driven, at least the 3 ISO Certified companies that I have worked for did.

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                        • #13
                          More and more flexo and roto places I have dealt with use the DEcmc setup for there standard versus straight up DE. But most of the product ran on this Flexo presses where a lot of process work and maybe 2 line colors tops. So it was more about getting density and dot gain then DE.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by jayncc1701 View Post
                            More and more flexo and roto places I have dealt with use the DEcmc setup for there standard versus straight up DE. But most of the product ran on this Flexo presses where a lot of process work and maybe 2 line colors tops. So it was more about getting density and dot gain then DE.
                            Yeah, the flexo work we do is more printing things on corrugated board, so it doesn't have the requirements that flexo printing on packaging does.

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                            • #15
                              Ugh. I wish I could show you guys the job we just got in. We measured a ∆E of 9.8...

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