Graphics help needed

[mrs_sweetpeach]

For the past couple of weeks I've been struggling with getting new business cards printed for the company. I use gimp as my graphics program, which means I get to specify color in RGB (and changing to a different graphics program is not an option). The printer, naturally, specifies its colors in CMYK. The company logo is supposed to be Pantone Blue. According to something I found somewhere on the web, Pantone Blue is 0.96,0,0,0 in CMYK. And according to http://web.forret.com, this translates to 10,255,255 in RGB (or, in hex, OAFFFF).

In an attempt to get the company logo to print in the correct shade of blue, I changed the blue of the logo from whatever it was in the graphics file (which turned into a muddy purple blue when the first set of cards came back from the printer) to OAFFFF.

Being a suspicious sort, I sent email to the printer with the new graphics image attached and asked them to look at it and tell me if it would print in Pantone Blue (or something reasonably close) before I ordered another full set.

I received a reply saying "The OAFFFF color is a bright sea green and when I convert it to CMYK, it is a darker bluish-green color." To my eye, looking at a swatch of Pantone Blue in the Pantone Color Guide, Pantone Blue is not at all green. I know that colors appear differently on different computer hardware, so the fact that the 0AFFFF version of the logo appears to be a very bright turquoise on my monitor does not mean much. But it still disturbs me that my printer rep sees the logo quite differently on her screen and that she tells me that it will print as bluish-green.

Having said all of that, should I go with the OAFFFF version of the logo? Should I change the logo to some other color and if so, what RGB do I use to end up with a logo that will print in a blue that looks like Pantone Blue?

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Are you doing 4-color printing of your business cards? Are there photos on it? If it's a typical business card, it should only have a couple of colors on the logo portion; just give them each color in B/W and specify "pantone blue" as the color for that layer.

When we do the music boosters newsletters, we give them a multiple-layer PDF and specify a pantone color for each layer. They use that to print a year's worth of blank newsletter front pages. Then when we have a new newsletter, we give them a PDF of just the text, to be printed black over the previously-printed blanks.

I thought business cards were usually printed the same way; the company had a hundred thousand cards printed with just the logo, then ordered a few hundred at a time per person with their specifics on it.

If you really are doing CYMK printed business cards, there is a CYMK plugin for Gimp.

I don't think I found any two sources online agree about what blue was, even "blue 072" had varying values.

This may be useful:
http://www.benedict.edu/divisions/inseff/mis/pdf/web/bc_web_dev_pantone_color_bridge_cmyk_pc.pdf

Lists blue-072 as:
100C 85M 0Y 4K

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

If Chris hasn't given you the best answer by then, I'll check what Photoshop says "Pantone Blue" is, and what its CMYK is.