Color guidlines with Nonstop Printing

Color in 4 Steps

If you do these 4 things, you will have more predictable color and maximize the color gammut.

1. Visit www.nonstopprinting.com/understanding-color to understand color a bit more.
   
2. Set up your Adobe Color Settings to gain control of your color workflow.
   
3. Design with your brightness settings at 50%. When we compare print to screen, we use a Mac monitor at 50% brightness.
   
4. Let us know whether you'd like us to target sRGB or Adobe RGB for RGB elements. For CMYK elements we only target to Gracol 2013 CRCP6.
   

Why we compare out output to mac monitors

1. Apple screens aren't perfect, but they're more consistent and enough people use them where you'll be able to find one to preview your work on if you're very concerned.
   
2. when we compare our output to the screen, it comes closest to 50% brightness. This is especially important for darker images.
   
3. if your images look to dark at 50%, brighten them up in photoshop.

Custom colors that are very important to hit?

Cost depends on the project, but for simple projects it adds about $75+ per color to the project. We don't like doing it because it can be very disruptive to our workflow and may also cause delays in your order, but we will if it's a non-negotiable.

There are only two ways we'll feel confident about the color you're targeting:

1. Preferred way: a physical sample mailed to us
2. Second Best: Pantone selection from a physical pantone book "Pantone Solid Uncoated" or "Pantoned Soild Coated":
   https://www.amazon.com/Pantone-GP1601A-Coated-Uncoated-Formula/dp/B07WWKJ7XZ

Why: it's the only objective way for us to target. Pantone books are good because they try hard to keep their swatch books consistent. They're not perfect though. The same color between pantone books are slightly different, and most people don't spend $180 a year to keep their book color books accurate (including us). Color fades over time.

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