Industrial quality colour printing technology

[William Overington]

Is there anyone reading this who can advise on industrial quality colour printing technology please?

In three posts of Tuesday 18 May 2021 on page 6 of the thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/138654-artwork-for-greetings-cards/

there is an issue that is puzzling me.

Briefly, there is a company named Papier that prints photo greetings cards in one-off quantities.

https://www.papier.com/

Upload a photo, personalize the text of the greeting, place an order, and the card arrives in the post, or, if one so chooses, is sent direct to a chosen recipient.

I have produced a number of cards and got excellent results. In fact, not one of my images has been a photograph, they have all been jpg files exported from Affinity Designer. In fact, I get frames from the supermarket, delivered with the grocery, and I frame the prints. The text that is notionally the greeting is on my cards, title, details, my name and the date, (month year).

The cards are printed and posted by an outside contractor and arrive from Guernsey.

Papier specifies CMYK.

Yet I have now realized that I have sent at least two previously with RGB and got good prints.

So I am wondering if anyone happens to know if industrial printers have a way of converting an RGB image to CMYK, possibly automated, as frankly a necessary facility as perhaps customers often send RGB files?

William

 

[sfriedberg]

Obviously, at least this one does.  And it would be a fairly common thing for printers in general to have, although they would be within their rights to send your job back with "resubmit in proper color space".

I know nothing about Papier specifically, but suspect their RIP software simply handles the issue for them.  It probably assumes some common RGB color profile (say, sRGB) and converts to CMYK using the assumed input color profile and their printer's destination color profile.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, sfriedberg said:

It probably assumes some common RGB color profile (say, sRGB) and converts to CMYK using the assumed input color profile and their printer's destination color profile.

I would hope that if the input file includes a color profile it would use that, rather than assuming sRGB.

6 hours ago, William Overington said:

So I am wondering if anyone happens to know if industrial printers have a way of converting an RGB image to CMYK, possibly automated, as frankly a necessary facility as perhaps customers often send RGB files?

Even if they have that capability, when it happens you are taking more of a chance on how things will turn out. If you provide it in the proper format, then you have more influence on the final result.

[William Overington]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I would hope that if the input file includes a color profile it would use that, rather than assuming sRGB.

I saw somewhere on the Papier website that they ask for one not to be included, but say that if one is obliged to use one then they suggested a specific one to use.

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Even if they have that capability, when it happens you are taking more of a chance on how things will turn out. If you provide it in the proper format, then you have more influence on the final result.

Yes. However for these particular graphics of the software unicorns the only source I had was some files that I made for the web in 1998 using some clip art from Microsoft Office as the starting point. Having found the Papier facility and thus be able to get good quality prints onto card in a one-off quantity I decided to get the best that I could.

This most recent card order has a pale blue background and when I tried changing to CMYK the blue went quite dark, so I decided to send it as sRGB and hope for the best, bearing in mind that the colours are always a bit darker on card than on the screen on the basis that the result might be better but possibly not worse. It was basically a choice of either getting the print that I could starting with an RGB image that was screen resolution quality and magnifying it three times both horizontally and vertically, or not having a print at all. As it is a relatively inexpensive greeting card print I decided to have the print. I am really pushing the boundary with it as the cards are marketed as photo greetings cards and I am using computer generated artwork and framing the results using frames that I get from the supermarket delivered with the grocery. The people at the Papier business have been very helpful over guiding me in my efforts to produce these prints. The prints that I get are of good print quality, like the quality greetings cards that one can buy at museums and art galleries and some shops. They cost about twice as much, which, considering that they are one-off and personalized is to me a very reasonable price. There are basically three types - their artwork plus personalized greeting, their artwork augmented with customer photograph(s) and personalized greeting, customer photograph and personalized greeting. There is an option for no printed greeting so that the customer can write a greeting in the blank area. So I am using the customer photograph and personalized greeting option except that I am using artwork rather than a photograph and where the greeting would go I am placing a title, description, my name, and date (month, year). So pushing the boundary with what are intended as everyday greetings cards. They also do framed prints using twelve ink colours so I have the chance to get one or more of those. 

William