Please help me color-match my DG inlay colors (2 Viewers)

[CSW]

Hi, everyone. I could use some advice on a set of inlays that I am trying to color match to a set of CPC chips that I ordered. Specifically, some of the DG colors are making me a bit nervous, which I know is to be expected. I just want to make sure I am doing everything that you all would recommend to maximize the chances of a great outcome.

I got a lot of great advice on the design of the chips and inlays themselves on a separate thread. And I was pointed to this older thread that contained the approximate CMYK values for CPC’s chips. I used those values to color-match the inlays. And then I printed samples of the inlays at FedEx to match up to my physical color sample set of CPC chips. A huge thanks to @timinater for the excellent results on most of these with no edits needed.

A couple of my inlays came out perfect with those CMYK values. Specifically, these lavender and retro lavender inlays are great (each inlay is shown first against just the matching color chip and then in a away that simulates how it will appear on my final chips with body and edge spot colors):

A couple others are probably close enough, given that I am color matching to edge spot colors, not to body colors. For example, the DG Peacock here looks perhaps a touch dark, but close enough that I won't mess with it, especially once placed on the body chip colors that it will be up against.

This DG Green is a bit more “faded” (for lack of a better word) than the chip itself, but perhaps that is because I am not using DG ink or CPC’s printers? Again, when placed directly on the relevant chip body color, it seems close enough to the edge spot color that I am inclined to perhaps leave that one alone, though I would ideally like to see this one just a touch brighter/lighter.

There are two others, however, that seem far enough off that I am wondering whether to try to mess with them or to trust that they will look good when they are printed with DG ink on CPC’s printers.

This DG pink inlay seems a bit dark, both when matched on the chip itself and when placed on the relevant chip body with the DG Pink chip nearby (simulating the edge spot that I’ll be matching).

This DG Arc Yellow is even more worrisome; it seems both too dark and possibly also too orange (not yellow enough).

I guess my ultimate question is this: Do I trust the CMYK values, even though I know they are only approximate, in combination with CPC’s DG inks/printers? Or do I try to lighten/brighten some of these colors up a bit? Any advice is welcome.

Thanks!

 

[bernielomax]

@chipinla

 

[AlbinoDragon]

CPC can't print dayglo colors. Nobody really can. The pigments that make them dayglo aren't printable pigments.

Your best bet is to not try to match the DG colors and use a complimentary color (say from your spots, as an example) as trying to match the base isn't going to be a 1:1 match.

 

[LeGold]

What @AlbinoDragon said. Also, are the FedEx printers calibrated? I'd be surprised if they were, and in any case I'd trust more someone who is in "the business" like @timinater.

 

[dickthebaker]

The colors you print will likely be very far off from what CPC's end result or any other printers color would be. They are very printer and material dependent. In printing we use ICC profiles to match printer to monitor to material. If you can get the ICC profile from wherever you will be printing you are only 33% there. Also not all printers use CMYK, just to add another wrinkle to the situation.

 

[timinater]

There really is no magic answer for colour matching.

Some background: The way it happens in other areas is you pay (usually very good money) for a "press proof", a sample of the finished product from the press or printer that will be doing the printing. From there you can compare it to your reference and sign off, or make changes as required. Most printers do not offer colour matching to that degree of specificity. It results in a lot of extra setup time for staff and throws a wrench into production schedules. Not to mention if they did charge for it, nobody would want to pay the fee.

Do I trust the CMYK values, even though I know they are only approximate

People have had good luck with the CMYK values I sampled in 2020, however DG Pink and DG Arc Yellow are likely outside of the printable gamut for a CMYK process. No amount of testing and tweaking will get you there.

Get it as close as you can, lighten up the yellow and pink a bit and you'll need to take your perfectionist hat off and accept that all these colours are subject to shifting, and the DG colours will be difficult/impossible to match.

 

[CSW]

Thanks very much, everyone, for the input. When I exchanged emails with David at CPC, he said that printing DG colors requires special printers with DG inks, so I am a bit surprised to hear that printing DG colors is impossible. Though he also said that my best bet was to sample the colors from the chip designer website, which is what I did before finding @timinater’s post. I am completely new to all things printing, so I’m sure there is a lot about this whole process that I am not quite understanding.

@AlbinoDragon, I appreciate the advice that it is best to match to non-DG colors, but I have several chips that have only DG colors, so sticking to non-DG colors isn’t really an option.

As for the calibration of FedEx printers, I unfortunately don’t know anything about printing, so I clearly went off a bit half-cocked. I was just trying to follow @timinater’s advice to not take the CMYK values on faith, but to use test prints to dial the colors in. It sounds like that is not really a viable option on my own, because it will depend in large part on CPC’s specific printers. And it sounds like CPC is unlikely to be willing to go through the effort to help much.

So, does everyone agree that the best that I can reasonably do is to stick with the 2020 CMYK values, except perhaps for lightening up the DG Pink and Arc Yellow, and then just cross my fingers? Maybe also ask CPC to let me know if the color looks way off when they go to print the inlays? I am actually not much of a perfectionist; if I can get close, I’ll be happy, especially since I am not matching body colors. I just don’t want to spend $4000 and end up with some glaring mismatches on half of my chips if there is something I could have done to improve my chances of a good outcome. If I’ve done all I can do, then I guess I will rest easy.

Thanks again.
Chris

 

[LeGold]

CPC will not let you know if things are way off, they just don't do that.

 

[Colquhoun]

... so I am a bit surprised to hear that printing DG colors is impossible.

It's not impossible to print DG colors, it's just impossible to replicate them in CMYK...which many printers use. A traditional printing press that prints CMYK, also known as 4-color process, uses those 4 inks. However, sometimes special print runs can be done on 5-color or 6-color (or more) presses, by adding an additional "spot" color, which is usually a Pantone color. Pantone have a whole group of dayglo colors available.
So technically, you can add a special extra color or more to 4-color process, but it gets pricey...and you need a press capable of printing it.

And even if you found a printer that could run additional Pantone colors, you would also have the issue of matching a Pantone dayglo color to the CPC dayglo chip.

 

[CSW]

Hi, everyone. I just wanted to round out this thread with a post about what CMYK values I ended up using and how the chips came out. I hope this is helpful for someone who ends up searching for this issue down the road. In the end, I am very happy with how this color matching ended up, especially given that I was trying to match to mostly DayGlo chip colors (which I now know made my life a bit harder). Thanks again to @timinater and everyone else at CPC who helped with these. (And before anyone asks, no, I still haven't gotten my ducks in a row for a showcase post on this set yet; I'm working on it ...)

With that out of the way, here is a table showing the CPC colors I was trying to match, the values suggested in @timinater's table, and the values I ended up using. I'm not sure why the Lavender was slightly different when I went back to look at these today; I didn't intend for my designer to mess with that one at all since it was essentially perfect with the first iteration using @timinater's values. We did iterate a bit on the DG Peacock, DG Pink, and (especially) DG Arc Yellow. Ultimately, I'm not sure whether the original values would have been just as good as (or batter than) the ones we chose, but I'm happy with the outcome.

And here are photos of the final chips under the light used at my poker table (I didn't break out my table toppers for this post; the grey concrete table is probably a better neutral background for people to see the colors as compared to my red and blue toppers).