HELP! Color is not true

[Connie]

I hope someone can please give me a little guidance. I have been going back
and forth with my printing company for over 2 weeks now. Every proof that I
get back from the printer has all of my pantone blues now various shades of
purple. When I started working on the Pub 2003 file I set the color settings
to Process Colors (CMYK). I sent our annual report - first as a .pdf with
Reflex Blue as my main color. I had embedded and recolored some color
pictures in my file. So all of the Reflex and other blues came back various
shades of purple. So I changed the file to different blues (Pantone Coated
289, 283 and 290) now the charts and other things are blue - EXCEPT the
photos I recolored. I re-embedded them from their original colors; I even
took them to grayscale in Photoshop and recolored them again - still purple!

Does anyone have any ideas of what I can do? The printers have no
suggestions. I am way past my deadline and at my wits end! I would
appreciate at least something else to try...

Thanks in advace for your consideration.

 

[Mike Bailey]

Connie,

I’m amazed the someone at the print shop you are dealing with doesn’t know
enough to tell you what is really going on here, any one with any amount of
experience should have clued into what’s causing this. If you want a true
Pantone blue it needs to be printed as a spot color, trying to get any blue
to print to a true shade using CMYK is almost a lost cause. If your printer
has a Pantone Process color book you can use that to choose the correct
colour from the “Pantone Process†library in Publisher, or enter the CMYK
values into publisher. I am assuming here that the job is being run on a
press, if it is a color copier job it can be a bit of a crap shoot, as color
copiers aren’t that stable in my experience (your get what you pay for).
Either set your Publisher file up as a Spot colour publication or as CMYK
plus spot. If you are trying to save the cost of the extra plate(s) you
probably are not going to be happy with the results.