Reverse-engineering color to counter Soft Proof result?

[GrowSnow]

[Admission up-front: I am not a professional designer, nor am I an expert Affinity suite user. Just a person who has to wear a lot of hats for a product-based business. Additionally, my monitor is not professionally calibrated using devices.]

In working with the printing company for our packaging, I'm trying to get an accurate representation of our brand's colors from the screen to print, naturally. The primary color in question is #ec138e or CMYK 0/98/0/0. The company's printer uses ICC profile is GRACoL2006_Coated1v2. Using this for the soft proof turns the magenta color to a more muted reddish color (see attachments), which is in-line with previous print runs using this color.

So, my question is: "is it possible to adjust this color such that the soft proof adjustment results in a magenta color as close as possible to the original?" Everything I've thought of and every color adjustment I've experimented with gets nowhere close to it. Is it just not possible to make it "more magenta" since the original color value is nearly maxed out?

[Final note - I'll be working with my printer to get color swatches printed to see which sample gets closest to the original, but thought I'd ask here to see if I can solve the problem before any test prints happen.]

Thanks for your understanding and input, Affinity community!

[cgidesign]

6 hours ago, GrowSnow said:

Is it just not possible to make it "more magenta" since the original color value is nearly maxed out?

It not possible because the GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 represents a printing process that can't achieve a more saturated magenta.

The icc profile describes, more or less, what colors a printing machine can print and on what type of paper it will put those colors.

The color part means: which inks / pigments are used in the printing machine. That defines the color range (the gamut) that this specific printing process can give you.

The paper type describes: how the raw ink interacts with the paper. E.g. the GRACoL has a slightly greyish paper type defined (paper type in this case is also called the whitepoint within the ICC profile). Because of this greyish paper the color get slightly muted.

So GRACol tells Affinity - "the most saturated magenta ink is less intense than what a computer dispaly can show and this ink goes on greyish paper which mutes it a bit more".

If you need a "better" magenta, youd need to either find a printing process that uses more saturated inks and / or ask the printer if they offer spot color printing.

Affinity softproof issue to keep in mind:

Affinity's softproof engine is broken in the way, that it ignores the whitepoint / paper type of the ICC profile. So if you use "absolute colorimetric rendering intent", which is the one you should for softproof, you get a result that is partly missleading.

A tip if not already doing this:

If you set your document's color space to CMYK and GRACoL then the colors Affinity works with are already those that can be printed. In that case the color pickers show you what you can get from the printer.

But,

if your display is not calibrated and maybe one of the not so accurate ones, this is all a bit of guess-work, because the display anyway might show wrong colors regardless of what ICC profile etc. you are using.

Another but:

A lot of people are working like this - non calibrated display, wrong color profile, buggy softproof engine, but still get something back from the printer that looks like magenta ("it's good enough for me" they say). 🙂

Last but:

because the above information is a bit simplified you might like to read more about this - here is a starting point:

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/color-management-printing.htm

[NotMyFault]

To get the CI color you may need to spend much more money and use spot colors which are another dedicated ink in addition to CMYK. But the printer / press must support those extra spot colors. It is used for some products for e.g. metallic effects or other saturated or reflective colors. Never the less, the paper itself influences the result.

Alternatively the package may get another coating for a shiny look.

[NotMyFault]

The link gives a good explanation about cmyk and spot colors

https://www.boxmaker.com/blog/spot-color-cmyk

[GrowSnow]

Thanks, both, for the information! Very educational (and a bit disappointing that the printer's machine may not be able to reach the target color). I'll work with them to see how close we can get.

[Ldina]

You can try dedicated Spot Colors (at extra cost), but you still have to contend with how the spot color inks interact with the paper surface and color. Still, it will often get you closer, especially if CMYK inks don't get you very close to your desired RGB color. 

Another option is a digital press (Indigo, etc), since they use more (and different types of) ink colors and different papers, some of which have a brighter base color and different coatings, for more "Pop". They are often not economical for huge press runs, but may be a good option for smaller runs, perhaps below 500–2000 pieces, depending on the nature of the job. 

One company I worked for had a blue logo color (Pantone 2935C), which wasn't achievable with just CMYK inks on press. To get close, we needed a 5th color, which increases the price (which my boss was too cheap to pay for). The "closest" CMYK blue (supposedly) was too purple for us, so I had to adjust my CMYK numbers until I got a blue that was at least acceptable on press. Many companies insist on having accurate, consistent branding and logo colors (Coca Cola, IBM, etc), so they pay extra for spot colors, which helps insure a better match over time and on different presses, papers, etc.

As mentioned, different aqueous coatings, varnishes and laminates can add extra Pop to colors. Again, at extra cost, but they can't make a darker color bright and light. Welcome to the world of Print!