As kids we hear the story that there is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Pretty soon it sinks in that the end of a rainbow is an elusive and illusory thing. Indeed, colour itself can sometimes seem equally intangible, despite being a crucial aspect of print production. But it does not have to be like that.

There are some surprisingly down-to-earth things that you can do to get in control of your colour reproduction.

One of the first things to do is to identify what the most common problems are, what causes them and what can be done to address them.

Colour management specialists reckon that as a rule of thumb one quarter of problems are with the files supplied, another quarter derived from the choice of the substrate and half the problems are with on-press process control.

If that is correct and the biggest source of problems are on-press then that’s a good place to start looking for quick wins in the quest for better colour.

There are still printers measuring by eye and densitometer – they don’t trust the tools. Their reluctance is understandable, printers with decades of experience, may find it hard to believe that a machine could be better than them.

Print business owners are urged to sell colour management systems to their print staff as a way to take the heat off them. For minders it is a way to get into colour within their allocated waste sheets – they know they can’t send a job on short, and no one likes going back to the production manager to ask for more sheets to makeready. That’s the buy-in for the minders.

Ultimately it is about saving sheets – and therefore time and money. It is about showing the minders that these tools make their lives easier. It is one less thing to worry about.

If you do go down the route of on-press colour control – and it is now pretty much a standard feature on presses of B2 and above, with 98 per cent of Heidelberg press installs now including a device of some sort – it is important to maximise the return on investment by ensuring your staff are trained to make the most of the technology. That takes time, and should be considered an ongoing process rather than one-off training.

For instance on-press controls can start with three days training on-site, then it can be left for a week, then there is follow-up training, then on like that, picking up a bit more over time. It is a good way of training – walk before you can run.

Some printers let the press manufacturer look after the firm’s colour set-up rather than doing it all itself. The thinking is that they are the experts, so leave it to them. You could do it yourself but it would mean investing a lot of time. You might save a few dollars doing it yourself but if you lost a few thousand having to do a reprint it seems a false economy.

So what about the other causes of colour confusion once you have sorted out any problems in the press hall? A lot of the problems stem from customers selecting substrates then supplying proofs that don’t match, which means that there is a disconnect between what printers are asked to produce versus what they are supplied. All the players in the supply chain want to fix colour and avoid finger pointing but it is often seen as being the responsibility of someone else.

One of the ways to address that is also through training. Informal colour training can be found online by those with the desire to find it and many of the vendors of colour, pre-press and printing technology have materials available.

Sometimes it is better to go back to college and do a course, and even when it comes to helping clients learn about colour, maybe even running one if you’re up to and up for it. Educating the clients can be positive. However, that depends on them being happy to learn and likely to take on board the lessons.

If you are not, there are courses available; with the vendors increasingly realising education is an important part of their service offering. Sometimes though the nature of the work doesn’t lend itself to training your clients. For instance if the orders are small and the customers unlikely to become regular it may not be cost-effective. Likewise if they don’t have the skills necessary to implement their own colour management it may be pointless in offering training. In those situations there is another approach.

For the printer the choices are to educate and assist clients or install colour server software. If you consider that a colour server costs around $12,000 – that’s a lot of training. But if you or they don’t have the time or the inclination then that’s where colour servers do come in.

Colour servers can be used to take incoming PDF files and to reprocess the colour separations to match the desired printing conditions of the press and the paper used.

They use clever file analysis and colour management to account for and correct any errors in the original set up of the files. This can be invaluable for helping out your less experienced customers.

Alas the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow just a myth. However, like most myths, there’s a grain of truth in it. It illuminates that the route to good colour reproduction is long and may never have an ending, fairy tale or otherwise. Nor will there be a pot of gold but there are definitely benefits, including financial savings from going on a colour quest.

Top tips for implementing colour management