Color Management

As a sign shop owner, you know how many challenges you can run into during the day. Some of these are issues you don’t often get that come up, but others are issues you likely have on a somewhat regular basis but can’t figure out how to fix. One common issue that many sign shop owners run into often is color matching. The color you see on your computer screen and the color your customer thinks they’re getting is rarely the color that prints out if you don’t have a good method for color matching. You want to give your clients the best quality signs possible, which is hard when the colors of the finished product don’t quite match up to their expectations. At shopVOX, we know that this is a problem that many shop owners have, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Solving this common problem doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might assume. Follow these tips to improve your color management and match colors correctly every time.

Print Out Color Charts on Media

You know that all of the materials you offer for signs for your customers can vary greatly. This can significantly impact the way color shows up on them. Just because colors look a certain way on some materials, like vinyl, for example, doesn’t mean they’re going to show up this way on any material you're using to print on. The finish is also going to make a huge difference in how your colors turn out. These are all things you need to take into consideration when matching colors for your signs. You need to know exactly how colors turn out on all of your different materials, which isn’t that hard to do. All printers come with a unique color chart, so whatever type of printer you use in your shop, you need to find its color chart to get started. If you don’t use the specific color chart for your printer, it will be impossible to accurately match your colors. Next, you need to print these color charts out on all of the different media you offer. This shows you exactly how colors will look on any products a customer might ask for.

Assigning Color Profiles to Design Software

In the next step, you're going to continue to use your printer’s color chart. When you have the color chart for your specific printer, you can install it in your graphic design software. You can do this with whatever type of graphic design software you use. Downloading or installing or color profiles directly into your design software allows you to design signs using the actual colors that your printer can create. This will help make it much easier for you to ensure that you’re using the correct colors that will match the final project. You won’t have to worry that a color you include in your design will end up being slightly different when you create designs with the proper color charts for your printer, to begin with.

Make a Popular Color Chart for Different Media Types and Printing Speeds

Lastly, you’ll want to print color charts on all of your materials to show the difference between different printing qualities and speeds. This means that you should end up with several different versions of each material, one for each printing speed you offer. Fortunately, you don’t do this for every color. You can create a popular color chart for your print shop to showcase different printing qualities and speeds for your clients. This allows you to use only the most common colors you use to give customers a good idea of how they turn out. Doing this can help you upsell your products to customers. Some customers may not initially want to pay more for a higher-quality print job because they don’t understand the difference. If a customer thinks that it won’t make a huge difference to pay less for lower quality, there’s really no reason for them to pay a little more for something better. However, as a sign shop owner, you know that something with higher quality will be worth it - you just need to show this to the customer.

Find More Ways to Improve Your Print Shop

Running a print shop comes with more challenges than color matching, although this is something that many struggle with. At shopVOX, we know the difficulties you might have at your shop and offer print shop software with features that can make your day-to-day tasks easier. Learn more about how shopVOX can help you run your print shop.