Color Expectations & Designing For iGen3 Output

Critical Color vs. Pleasing Color

When ColorCentric first installed our iGen3 the experts at Xerox asked us "what are the expectations for your color printing business, are you trying for 'critical color' or 'pleasing color'."

Our response was that we wanted to provide color that accurately represented the expectations of our clients. Therefore, by definition, anything we did was "color critical".

iGen & PMS Colors

One of the reasons that ColorCentric chose Xerox' DocuSP® RIP for our iGen3 was its ability to provide us an accurate color swatch book derived from the Pantone® Matching System (PMS).

PMS color callouts have been used for years by the design community for one very specific reason: by calling out a PMS color, the designer has an understanding of exactly what the color will look like upon final printing.

ColorCentric understands how important setting accurate expectations can be and, to that end, we have developed our own version of the Pantone® Matching System that allows our clients to choose from our palette of colors and to have the comfort of knowing what to expect when the final print is complete.

* An important note regarding the DocuSP® and Duotones: The DocuSP® does not interpret Duotones well, as it does not have a color table for Duotones and the color will be converted to CMYK color space.

iGen3: The "N" Color Press

The iGen3 is a four color dry-ink printer that uses Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to generate print output. However, because of the intelligence of the DocuSP® RIP, the iGen has the unparalleled ability to produce prints that in traditional offset printing would be considered 7, 8, 10, 12, or more colors.

By choosing Pantone® colors from our swatch book, and leaving them as Spot Colors, a designer can choose as many solids as he/she wishes and can still place CMYK or RGB files in the document and have the RIP interpret all of the various color spaces correctly.

* It is imperative that if you are choosing a PMS color that you do not select the process version, the color must be left as "Spot" for the RIP to provide the intended color output.

As an example, if a designer has a document where he/she has selected Pantone® 349C, Pantone® 302C and Pantone® 102C, while also placing a photograph in the document, the iGen3 has the ability to interpret and print the three Spot colors, along with the four color photograph, making this particular design (in the traditional offset world) a seven color job. It is this amazing color interpretation power that keeps ColorCentric from defining the iGen3 as simply a "Four Color Print Engine".