Warning: My local print shop's new digital press totally botched a 500-piece mailer job

I sent over a CMYK PDF for a client's postcard mailer last Tuesday, and the colors came back super washed out, like a 20% fade across the whole run. The shop manager said their new Ricoh Pro C7200x was 'calibrated differently' and they didn't catch it. I had to eat the cost and rush a reprint elsewhere to meet the deadline. Has anyone else had a big color shift with newer digital presses, and how do you proof for it now?

2 comments

2 Comments

noah_black3d ago

Yeah, that's rough, but honestly the PDF itself might be part of the problem. A lot of newer digital presses, especially Ricohs, run on a different color system. Sending a plain CMYK PDF and expecting it to match is asking for trouble these days. You really need a press profile from the shop and export your file with that profile embedded. I learned the hard way after a magenta shift on a brochure. Now I always ask for their specific ICC profile before I even start the design.

gavin9283d ago

See, I've had the opposite happen. I send files with the shop's profile and the color still comes out weird half the time. It feels like the real issue is their press calibration, not the file. I've started just asking for a physical proof on the actual paper, because that's the only thing that ever matches.