Color Differences Between Vendors

Question

I have a CMYK formula of 10-25-60-25 that I use as a background color for a client. I don't "convert" those colors, they are in fact the exact same formula in whatever application is being used. I have printed banners, table covers, posters, flyers, etc and the color are the same on screen and embedded but are outputting differently. I had a job printed that was quite expensive on a textured laminate and it came back with the inks bleeding into each other and the color was leaning toward green instead of gold. I called the vendor and told them the job was unacceptable, more because of the low res smears, but also because of color. They sent the job out to another company and it came back perfect in color and resolution. Sorry to be long winded but offset and even digital printing seem to provide a proper gold color, the banners and posters seem to have the green tone but the clincher is that I just printed the same swatch from Quark and Illustrator to my inkjet printer Quark was green, Illustrator was gold. I've been a designer for 20 years, meaning I'm not new to the industry. I guess my question is: "Is this is a problem I can fix?" Inconsistent results are making me nutty.

Answer 1

To get consistent colors takes alot of effort and follow though. You cannot make this an easy task to manage, but you can get consistent and acceptable results. To answer your question there woudl be many pages to this post.
I have not used Quark in awhile, so don't know if they added color management. We used to turn off color management in Adobe (AKA: Emulate Illustrator 6) to get consistent color prints on our laser printer betwen Illustrator and Quark.
If color is important to you, and you are dealing with different printer, then you need to get proofs and accurate ones like Kodak approval. Even big companies like CryoVac (AKA CryoCrap) their proofs don't match their press and especially when they do their proofs in South Carolina, and print in Oklahoma. In reality proofs never 100.0% exactly match press, but when they are totally off in highlight areas or neutrals with color casts is a sign of a bad proofing system.
You may have to cheat the color sometimes. Litho is the most stable and consistent but lets say you want to print vinyl banners, you may have to get a small proof or test color, then alter your color to match. Golds and browns usually require the most attention, as they use tints of all 4 colors, and can easily shift from going to warm/cool or light/darkover a few %. You will usually have less of a problem with for example 100y. Yellow is an interesting color as people usually think of removing ink to get a color lighter(in cmyk), yellow often acts as a brightener in gold/brown/fleshtone and adding more yellow can lighten a color. A green cast sometiems means -cy, but also just -c can do the trick(depends on the exact color the and neighboring colors).