I'm looking for a bit of expert advice on the printing of catalogues in Shanghai. We've had terrible experiences in the past with printers getting the colour management wrong.

Does anyone know of a print company that can do a professional job of managing print colours? And can anyone tell us what type of file we should be handing over to the printer?

We recently tried giving a printer JPG files in CMYK, but the printer had absolutely no idea what profile they should be using for their printer (they didn't even know that profiles existed). The results were awful.

We've since been advised by someone in the advertising industry that the standard practice is to present printers with files in RGB and get the printer to make the conversion to CMYK in their own profile.

But then we went to a fairly decent printing company and they told us that they specifically don't want RGB format files because they can't guarantee that the colours won't change when they convert to CMYK. So when we asked them what CMYK profile they needed for their printer, they were again unable to tell us.

If you're not involved in printing or graphic design, this message will have put you to sleep by now. If you're still awake and you know what I'm talking about, can you please offer us some advice?

Many thanks,

Tim

I find the best way to deal with this is to have color proofs of the RGB files printed out via an Epson printer. Once you are happy with the colors then supply the proof along with the RGB files and get them to convert to CMYK. I am yet to find a printer here that has even heard of the term "Color Management". If you are converting to CMYK without knowing the printers profile you have no way of knowing how it will be interpreted and more often than not end up with crappy results.

Get a professional design firm to help you, doing it yourself or getting local freelancers (essentially doing it on the cheap) will never work here. You need someone in the process that knows what they are doing and it will NEVER be the printer!

Just out of curiosity, where is the customer base that receives the catalog? We have found the best solution is to do all our prepress work CMYK in China and then transmit files for printing and mailing to RRD in US. Our catalogs are, however, mostly mailed to US and Canada.

Try giving them CMYK files on Tiff Format. Then ask for proofs. If your not satisfied with the color, just return it to them. Tiff files are high resolution files and are much easier to color correct. By the way, are this printers using the Computer To Plate Printing Process? (CTP) If yes, a PDF file will suffice.

ask them to print you a sample for you to sign as approval of the colors. i find it easier to make them get things right with the many trips they need to make due to wrong colors than to talk technical with them.

I think they called it 4C or 5C here. 4C refers to artwork in CMYK, 5C refers to metallic print, which has to be printed on coated paper to achieve its nice effect. as milo mention, a pdf file would usually do.

request for a pantone chart from the printer, as those are the colors that can be done by their printers

could you update us on how did your printing go? we usually send our artwork to singapore for printing & delivery...maybe we could try the option here if it works out for u

Hi,
It is better to find a reliable designer or design firm ,and let them to find how to solve the printing problems. As you are not an expert and don't need to be an expert in the printing area.
Regularly we will print a real sample which means printed by the film. And client need to sign on that and then we will print everything out. Before that our designer will find the color reference book to choose the right color which client want or like .


Cheers

Mike
www.jimmygraphic.com

chunki wrote:I'm looking for a bit of expert advice on the printing of catalogues in Shanghai. We've had terrible experiences in the past with printers getting the colour management wrong.
...............
Many thanks,
Tim

I compared 5 different designers and 3 printing companies in the last year. After all, I can recommend you
www.sinodot.com
Ask for Ken, he is a real professional.
I'm very satisfied with their service.

We use printers all over China and the best method we do is print a pdf with crop marks and a colour bar down the bottom.
Most times we find that once they have this they can match the colour to a their printers standard or profile.
Also we use CYMK only and use Indesign only as it converts the RGB to CYMK in the PDF process.

Sorry it's taken me so long to reply to all the messages in this thread. My password went AWOL for a while.

Many thanks for all the advice. It was extremely useful. We took foreverinchina's advice and went with Ken at sinodot, sending the files in Acrobat format (the CMYK). Amazingly, the printing came back exactly the way it looked on the computer screen, which was good.

The only problem was that we had over-edited a couple of images that had come back from previous print runs (with different printing companies) looking like they had been sprinkled with coal dust. This time, they came back on the light side, but the problem was in the editing, rather than the printing.

So it is possible to get decent printing done in China after all. And it's bound to be a whole lot cheaper than printing in Singapore, Canada or wherever. We got a printing quote in the UK last year and it was more than ten times the price here in China.

Many thanks,

Tim