You are Working with a Critical Color Press

When Printing Impressions started looking for a color digital press, 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". Their recommendation was the iGen3.

iGen & PMS Colors

One of the reasons that Printing Impressions 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.

Printing Impressions 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.

Print as Many PMS colors as You Want

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 Printing Impressions from defining the iGen3 as simply a "Four Color Print Engine".

Notes for Designers:

• Sending Files
• Creating Your File
• Saving your PDF's

Sending Files

When you are ready to send the files, send us a simple email to ftp@impressions-kc.com get the instructions automatically sent back to you.

Creating Your File

Most files that were prepared for offset printing can be used for the Xerox iGen 3. There are a few adjustments that may need to be done for optimal results.

• Image area no bigger than 14.25" x 20.25"
• Keep your images to 300 dpi or less
• Use 100% black if you want "super-black"
• Use Pantone Spot Colors whenever possible
• Use RBG pictures whenever possible
• Specify gradient as linear blends of spot color
• Tints below 25% or above 75% work best
• Overprint text, verify black text over color or image
• Manually trap vector artwork
• Avoided high-contrast gradients (or none)
• Gradient(s) starts and end with color (not white)
• Fonts for positive solid text use a minimum of 2 point and 3 point for reverse.
• Fonts for positive tinted text use a minimum of 4 point and 6 point for reverse.
• When using Kanji fonts in either positive and reverse/negative text the minimum type size should be 8 point or larger for best results.
• If matching to offset, must send sample to match color
• Allow for extra time to do offset color match

Saving Your PDF

• Save PDF's using Adobe's InDesign or Distiller only
• Crop Marks are inside PDF
• Used TIFF and EPS images when creating PDF
• Used Maximum JPEG encoding
• Images are at least 300dpi
• Included bleeds to accommodate page size
• Set trapping to "none"
• Flattened Photoshop files before importing
• Use SWOP to match offset output
• Used "Export" or "Save As" to create PDF
• Embedded fonts in PDF
• Used correct color profiles:
  • RBG: sRBG - IEC61966-2.1
  • CMYK: Xerox iGen DocuSP - iGen3 V3.6
• Carefully previewed PDF file in Acrobat Reader
• Printed PDF file on printer to pre-proof