Throwing Shades

Color management continues to be a hot topic in commercial print, packaging and display graphics. But what about textiles?

As the industry continues a migration to increased use of digital textile printing technologies, what is the same and different? We turned to two experts for answers: Mike Scrutton, director of print technology and strategy at Adobe; and Ray Cheydleur, printing and imaging portfolio manager for X-Rite/Pantone. Both have a long history of color management expertise in printing and packaging, and both have also applied this knowledge to textiles.

Printing News: Mike, how would you characterize color management in the textiles industry?

Mike Scrutton:  Textile color workflows fall into two separate, very discrete camps. Although as with most things, there is some blurring in the middle. The first is very much a named spot color workflow where the designer is provided with a color palette that can be reproduced faithfully, limiting the colors that can be used in a design. The second is where you just let the designer go at it, and you try to resolve any color reproduction issues later.

PN: Let’s talk about the first one. Clearly, this makes a lot of sense when you are talking about conventional textile printing, such as screen printing, where the technology limits the number of colors that can be used, right?

MS: Exactly. Brands care about the color and consistent color reproduction for a variety of reasons. You may have a color in a print blouse where it is alongside something else you might be wearing, such as a pair of pants, that is a solid color. And each uses a completely different technique. You are not going to screen print a solid color on a pair of pants – you are going to dip it. Let’s say the blouse print has a particular shade of cerise in it, and the pants are also cerise. You want those two colors to match as precisely as possible. Complicating it further, you likely have two different fabric types you are dealing with.

It’s different in commercial print. Color management is still stringent, but if you think about a magazine, I only worry about color management within the context of that magazine. But in textiles and apparel, the end customer will be assembling their own ensemble that they want to look nice together. You never tend to see a single product in isolation, whether it is in apparel or home décor.

PN: In terms of the second one, you could call it, “Designers Gone Wild.” How do they know that the color is achievable in the production world?

MS: The first issue is how the designer specifies the color. Many times they will use the standard Pantone color swatch books used in commercial print, which is a color standard for printing on paper, and it wasn’t designed for textiles. It may not deliver the expected outcome. Then it is up to the printer to try to work out how to reproduce the color. This is often the case with independent designers or smaller brands that may not have as sophisticated a color workflow.

Designers are also using an RGB workflow, and when I speak at conferences, I always say, "Please, if you are defining an RGB color, please be explicit and specify sRGB or Adobe RGB or whatever." That will help the producer have more of a chance of reaching the desired color.

PN: Good advice. What about a designer ordering something produced by a supplier like Spoonflower? Are there ways in that model they can ensure the desired outcome?

MS: Absolutely. You can tell the provider what fabric you will be printing on, and in the case of Spoonflower, you can order a print sample on the target fabric. It will have a variety of colors, and each patch will have a hex code printed below it for that particular color. So you ask for that specific hex code when you order the piece, and you can be pretty confident you are going to get the color you expected. It’s basically an RGB workflow that emulates a spot color workflow.

PN: Of course, another important aspect of color management is measurement, and that’s where your expertise comes in, Ray. Maybe you could start by just talking a little bit about what our readers are typically familiar with in terms of color management in commercial or display graphics printing and how that translates over to textiles.

Ray Cheydleur: I would start by saying there are a lot of things that you see in digital textiles today that are in some ways, in the state digital color printing was 10 or 15 years ago. The tools are there, but some of the practitioners are not aware of all the tools, or they're not aware how the tools are different between analog and digital technologies.

In a specific example, a designer was having custom wall coverings made, and the printer she chose could replicate the colors, but only with a lot of tweaking. It then becomes very difficult to replicate this in the future. She switched to another provider in the same city using the same device, but this second provider taught her about preparing her files for that device. That marries the upfront expectation with production and makes for a happier customer and a more profitable printer.

PN: You obviously work with color measurement devices, which I assume are also included in that set of tools you referenced. Can you talk a little about the role those devices play, from creation through production, and which type is more suited to textiles?

RC: In traditional textiles, people mostly, but not exclusively, use sphere-based color measurement instruments. But people also tend to use what they are familiar with. They might use a device that worked well for electrophotographic printing, but which isn’t optimum for textiles. They end up with a controlled process, but one that is not optimally controlled.

PN: Can you give me an example of a color measurement instrument that you have optimized for textiles?

RC: As you know, we have had i1Pro’s in the market for almost as long as I have been in the industry. Most recently, we developed the i1Pro 3 Plus, a large aperture version of the i1Pro 3, that has some additional capability and a different illumination fill that enhances color measurement in textiles. These tools are not inexpensive, of course, but if you look at the entire life cycle of the process, they save you money and frustration in the end.

PN: So how does that independent designer or small brand go about selecting and specifying the colors they are going to use in a particular design?

RC: There’s no one workflow that works for everything. But the key here is working well with the production side. They can either give you an optimized set of colors, or they can give you an ICC profile that you can use to see whether the colors do what you expect them to do. And it needs to be color managed on both ends. Production has color management; and ideally, design has a color managed screen and an idea of how some of these preview tools work in their design application.

PN: What makes the textiles process different from paper-based printing?

RC: On paper, we have finishes, and these tend to be relatively straightforward. But in textiles, the texture of the fabric combined with the finish presents an issue for color management. This, again, points out the importance of the designer not simply handing off a file, but to actually communicate with their producer. The file might have encapsulated within it information about particular Pantone colors and their achievability. But with proper communication, the provider can say, "Based on this ICC profile, I can hit this color perfectly, but perhaps this other one will suffer. Is that okay?" It makes both of them smarter and develops a better long-term relationship.

PN: So in your experience, what is your recommendation for designers and producers in textiles relative to choosing a 45/0 or 0/45 spectrophotometer versus a sphere-based spectrophotometer to overcome some of these issues?

RC: The difference is a 0/45 tends to do a better job of illuminating the way your eye sees color. But for control of color, a sphere is very powerful, particularly when you get to textured substrates such as textiles. And for a producer of digital printing, it’s also important to know what your RIP and color management tools work with. It doesn't matter what instrument you have, if it won't connect to the RIP, it probably won't be used very much.