Pantone Color Matching

Every customer has a logo with specific colors and fonts. The image has been developed and tagged with a specific Pantone color. Pantone colors are a formula color mixture designed for off-set printing of spot colors. There are a limited number of Pantone colors and a mixture ratio to achieve that exact match. Pantones when used properly will carry your branded colors into any printed media in the off-set print industry.

Sign making is not off-set printing it is CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) 4 color inkjet printing. Sometimes it is CMYK+MM+MC (or Medium Magenta and Medium Cyan) or 6 color printing. There is a method of matching Pantones using digital printers and it involves creating media profiles and calibrating our machines to print the same on the wide variety of white, off white, and clear print media. We use a Spectrophotometer to read the white points of the media, we use X-rite software to read and adjust the color gamut which builds ICC printer profiles. This technology has been tested and refined and available to anybody with digital printers. We have invested the money the time and the effort learning about color because we want to reproduce your image without compromising your logo, your brand or image quality. Whether we are printing banners or car decals we strive to match your colors.

Most sign shops and digital printers do not invest in color management. They download generic ICC profiles made on a different machine on a different media. They may seem to print decent enough for the quiky banner, but if asked to reproduce your PMS 286 Blue and PMS 349 Green they will not guarantee you a match and tell you Pantones are a “general” reference. That’s only one reason we rise above local sign and digital printers, “Because Image is Everything”.