True Color – I know it when I see it

Your color television at home does marvelous things using just red, blue and green colors to generate the color picture that you see on your screen.  However, it actually pales in comparison to the colors you see as you walk out your door and look around your environment.

Unfortunately it is very easy to fool the human eye.  Think about the last time you went to purchase a color television.  If you look at only one television, the picture looks great.  However, when you begin to compare different televisions side by side you begin to discern differences in the picture quality that were difficult to detect before.  By comparison, we can begin to appreciate the subtle differences between the picture quality the value of one television versus another.

Panasonic is touting how marvelous their new 3-D television is and how by adding a fourth color, yellow, it makes a tremendous difference in the quality of the picture and color it reproduces.  They also indicate that you have to see it in comparison to understand what you are missing.

Printing reproduction is very similar.  It can be challenging to differentiate between good and better without having the advantage of a side by side comparison.  However, unless your business is isolated and you don’t have any competition, what you print will be compared to your competition and your pictures will need to stand up to the competition.

A good definition of true color is getting it as close as humanly possible to the original (and sometimes better than the original picture) as possible.  It can be achieved via a combination of equipment and training.  The equipment is important, because it must be able to reproduce color with few limitations.  The training is just as important so that the operator is fully capable and knowledgeable of operating the equipment so that it can run optimally.

The next time you have a printing job, make sure you are getting what you pay for.  What equipment is your printer using?  How state of the art is it?  What color range is it capable of reproducing?  How close to your color project is it capable of getting?  Don’t be satisfied with anything less than as close to true color as you can get.