ID colour, matching proof

I know this question will cover a range of basic issues, but a little steering in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. I've an Illustrator file containing a photo of marble material which was used as a background for a printed book cover originally laid out in Quark. I'm to recreate that cover in ID and attempt to match colours as much as possible, hopefully avoiding more than one printer's proof. Currently, the marble file appears drastically more pink than the proper sandy yellow, intended for the printed cover.
The circumstances I'm working under are less than ideal, most obviously, in the use of an non-calibrated monitor (it's a simple Asus laptop, whilst stranded here in hospital in Taiwan). Purchasing a high-end monitor, or other calibration equipment (unless there's a handy inexpensive tool or app to address this) aren't really an option at the moment, so what basic steps might I be looking at taking to at least hopefully get the colour somewhere 'in the ballpark' before sending to the printers? I believe everything I'm looking at is a CMYK file, though confirming all that in ID,IL and Qk, hasn't been done.
Appreciatively, Luca.

hopefully avoiding more than one printer's proof.
Given that you probably don't have an accurate display profile or an accurate profile for the POD press, you should expect to need more than one proof, which isn't much of an expense with POD.
The CMYK profile can shift the soft proof of light neutral colors a fair amount. Here's your color with Japan Web, Euroscale, US Web Coated, and US Sheetfed Coated profiles assigned:

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Hi, Im having trouble colour matching photoshop to windows picture/fax viewer. The colours in windows (as many people have said before) are a lot more saturated.
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Thanks!
I did think of that as the reason, although I was a bit confused as like i said, we are also using another EIZO monitor which has a perfect balance between photoshop and windows yet I've checked all the setting between the two monitors which are the same.
It's an older eizo so it may just be this new one has a wider gamut.
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hi guys
without wanting to upset the current findings here's my simple problem:
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ecause normally all book makers need the files in the sRGB format. Or is Aperture so intelligent and convert it automatically ?
Each make and model of digital camera has a proprietary colour preprocessing, somewhat the same as the proprietar colour preprocessing in physical film. Kodak Kodachrome does not render the same scene as Kodak EktaChrome, Kodak EktaChrome does not render the same scene as Agfa, and so on and so forth. These proprietary colour preprocessing 'looks' are preserved in the raw file format, and the colour management system that renders these 'looks' relative to an ICC colour space characterisation, e.g. sRGB or AdobeRGB.
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If you can't identify a colour in your source colour space, you can't image that colour in your destination colour space. It is irrelevant whether your destination colour space in fact contains the colour, because the colour is not in your source colour space.
Similarly, if I have to input character information in ANSI X3.4 American Standard Code for Information, first published in 1968, I can't interchange character information that calls for characters not in ANSI X3.4 American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
Don't use sRGB. It is simple set theory.
/hh

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OK, that was not a serious comment but there is truth here, and it should not be?
Equipment:
Imac 10.4.11
Photoshop CS3
Canon printer
monitor callibrated with Spyder 3 Pro
Colour management policy accurate in theory,
Working space same as camera space same as embedded profiles from Raw.Adobe RGB1998,
working in 16 bit, minor adjustments in raw, and CS3.
paper used - Photo Paper Plus Glossy (PP101)
Printer profile set to SP2 (same as semi gloss unfortunatley)
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3. Oranges less saturated
4. Colours often, in general, are bland and lack the impact that I see even in the soft proof.
QUESTION:
What could be going wrong? I have used the channel mixer to compensate for colours, but this I was doing before i bought the spyder3 Pro. I should not have to do this. Does the printer convert on the fly a 16 bit data image to 8 bit, because I never convert before sending to the printer? In windows my printer shows the option to print using Adobe RGB 1998. But in my Mac I do not see this option, could it be that the printer is using s'RGB regardless of what CS3 sends to it?
I have been struggling with these issues for a few weeks now and can find no solution. EXCEPT, that when i tilt my LCD monitor upwards I get better colour accuracy, the darker parts of images are more in line with the photo. YET, i have profiled the monitor at least 15 times over the past 2 weeks.
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thankyou, Chris.

Chris wrote:
>But as with marketing campaigns and advertising policies, maybe it is time for the "Teachers and lecturers" in this industry to make this point more clearly.
Yes, they certainly should emphasize how quality and the means to achieve it are also tied to better equipment. It's also necessary that the users become more competent, of course, but the quality of the materials and equipment is just as crucial in order to achieve quality results.
>It is only something that I am beginning to realise. for me a monitor was a monitor. The way that colour management hardware manufacturers talk is therefore un-balanced.
They do their bit, which also includes the necessary evils of hype and marketing. It's *our* job not to fall for the inflated claims and the manufactured enthusiasm -- to ask around, read the reviews and understand how to interpret the specs. NEVER buy ANYTHING just based on the say-so of the manufacturer!
>The way that Pantone and makers of colour cards rant on about colour is also un-balanced. What they should be adding is ....with a proper monitor designed for photos these products will work??
The matching of spot colors on a monitor display is a tricky business in itself. Of the 1100 or so colors in the Pantone Coated palette, about 140 are more than 3 DeltaE 2000 outside of the gamut of sRGB (using Relative Colorimetric) and about 185 are more than 2 DeltaE 2000 off. The peak color difference is at 13 DeltaE.
But many of the monitors out there don't even cover sRGB, which is a relatively small color space. My Apple Studio Display has a gamut 15% *smaller* than sRGB, for example: more than 200 of the Pantone coated colors are 3 DeltaE 2000 or more outside its gamut (with a peak at 11.4 DeltaE), and 265 are off by 2 DeltaE or more.
On the other hand, the newer higher-end displays from Eizo and NEC-Mitsubishi (and others too from Samsung and HP) cover gamuts that are far wider, enough to cover AdobeRGB or larger.
Only 35 Pantone coated colors are outside AdobeRGB by 3 DeltaE 2000 or more, and 65 by 2 DeltaE 2000 or more (the highest color difference is a much more moderate 6.2 DeltaE).
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GIF for line-type graphics with limited colors
JPEG for photos or other rich complex graphics
PNG-24 for graphics with alpha transparency (masks)
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Smaller equals faster but small can also mean lower quality (less colors for GIFs, more compression on JPEGs).
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Anyhoo... that's probably more information then you need. Hope its interesting and useful.

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Jeff

Send me some .tiff images of what you need matched via email if you get in a bind. It's kinda what I do for a livin', matching things up and whatnot.
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greetings all.
i have a number of pictures that i have imported into illustrator.
some are live traced vector images
some are bitmaps from photoshop
here is my question. i want to take an image and create a swatch from the range of colours expressed in the image. alternatively i'd like a workflow that allows me to match complimentary colours to what is already there.
i am pretty sure that it can be done via a live trace but often it doesnt give me all the colours i would like to use?
are there any other ways in illustrator, 3 rd party programs or other recommendations that you recommend?
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-s

Try Window>Extensions>Kuler

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Has anyone figured how to match the colours of two or more images in PSE9?
Basically, I'm talking about taking a "snapshot" of the settings on one photo and copying that across to another (not every photo in the batch).

No, instead of clicking "done", I clicked "open image" - after having first changed colour balance/brightness etc. I was reluctant to add another stage in the process by clicking "done" - I'm only after saving it back in jpeg.
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I am not talking about slight differences but some look as dark as Hades and others have skin looking radioactive pink!
Is there no easy way to ensure that what is shown on the screen at every stage actually comes out on the paper?????
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I never had the issue with CS2 or CS3.
So, can we assume you are using a version other than 12 (CS2) and 13 (CS3)?
If it's version 12 or earlier, I can attest to profile-based color management working exactly as advertised with various printers, including Epsons, with the following caveat: If you are not printing to your 1290 or 2880 via a PostScript RIP (such as Epson's own StylusRIP or a third-party product) -- i.e., if you are using the native Epson drivers -- then your Illustrator document must be RGB mode. If you are printing CMYK documents via the native drivers, results will be unpredictable.
Of course, if you're using an Illustrator version earlier than 9, you must print via a PostScript RIP because there was no such thing as an RGB document mode back then. Illustrator merely outputted 'device' CMYK.
When these tools are meant to help and do nothing but get in the way it is time to change!
Change to what? Not a lot of choices out there for professional illustration. If you had this working properly in versions 12 and 13, I guess you could change back to one of those from whatever version you're now using. I suppose it is possible that the version you are using now has a bug in this regard.
It sounds like you're doing things correctly, but if you'd be more specific about your color and print-time settings (plus document color mode, printer driver, etc.), perhaps one of us might be able to suggest a procedural change.
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Hi,
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I've managed to sort this now.
In case anyone is interested, I created a view that would display the totals for each RAG status including a 0 if total is null and then set custom colours for the pie chart in the order to match the SQL output (i.e. A (amber) first, G (green) second, R (red) third). Simple but it works for my needs.

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I usually use three cameras of different makes and occasionally five (adding two GoPros) This leaves me with the task of colour matching in post as even when manually adjusting for WB, the sensors just record some colours differently.
Here's a sample where I've manully adjusted the colours so that the shirt is more or less the same from all three angles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMacSgwjFBc The CU of the fly tyer has the best colour representation of the three cameras so I would want to match colour or the other two, to it. FCPx's colour match doesn't cut it for this job.
What I'd like is a colour adjustment tool where I could pick one or more shades in one clip, from his shirt for example, and then paste that pick onto a different clip and have the tool adjust the colour of that clip, based on the difference.
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ID colour, matching proof

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