Meeting Summary: Improve Your Color Knowledge

Thu, Sep 24th, 2009 at 6:00 PM

Macomb Community College

Event Details

It was a beautiful fall evening on September 24 at Macomb Community College where we gathered to improve our color knowledge. There were 147 attendees and included many first-timers. Everyone received a Colour Quiz flip chart supplied by FlintGroup (www.flintgrp.com) that shows how the same color ink looks different because of the paper stock it is printed on.

Members came for some one-on-one time with our Answer Desk volunteers as they munched on roll-up sandwiches and veggies before the meeting actually started. Many thanks go to Laura Lyday of LydayCreative and Celia McCulloch for volunteering.

Color management is a complex subject covering a wide range of topics but our presenters were ready to explain as much as they could in the allotted time frame. Rick Rys from Tepel Brothers Printing Company (www.TepelBrothers.com) took us through the basics of color, discussed color spaces (RGB, CMYK, L*a*b), monitor calibration, showed how to synchronize color across the Adobe Creative Suite, and the importance of profiles in the print workflow.

X-Rite representatives Michelle DeFouw, Mark Gundlach and Dave Benner were on hand to demonstrate i1XTreme and ColorMunki Design, two color management solutions used by commercial photographers, graphic designers and prepress professionals to obtain accurate color on all devices throughout the digital workflow process. If you don’t know about these products, swing on over to www.xrite.com to get details.

X-Rite is the global leader in color science and technology. The company, which now includes color industry leader Pantone, Inc., develops, manufactures, markets and supports innovative color solutions through measurement systems, software, color standards and services. X-Rite’s expertise in inspiring, selecting, measuring, formulating, communicating and matching color helps users get color right the first time and every time, which translates to better quality and reduced costs.

We then raffled off the following awesome prizes: ten sets of Standards 1, 2 and 3 from Sappi Paper; Pantone Formula color guides donated by Tepel Brothers; books; a subscription to StockLayouts template library; two HVC Color Composer plug-ins; a FoldRite Template Master plug-in; Kelby Training Online; subscriptions to InDesign Magazine; two copies of Flow software; and one copy of CS4 InDesign.

To top off the night, there was a special drawing for two ColorMunki Designs and one i1Basic, generously donated by X-Rite.

Thank you

Thanks to the following sponsors:

* Adobe Systems Inc. www.adobe.com

* Peachpit www.peachpit.com

* O’Reilly www.orielly.com

* Sheryl Wilson, Michigan Market Manager for Sappi paper www.sappi.com

* KW Media for Kelby Training Online www.kelbytraining.com

* Gridiron Software www.gridironsoftware.com

* David Blatner www.indesignmag.com

* Stocklayout www.stocklayouts.com

* XChange International www.xchangeuk.com

* FoldRite www.foldfactory.com

* Macomb Community College (www.macomb.edu) and the Media and Communication Arts department for the meeting space and food.

Comments from attendees

Knowledgable speakers, excellent presentation with good visuals.

Very enlightening! Made a hard subject simple.

Great to hear this topic “demystified” by the pros.

Wow! Fascinating -- simplifying a complex process. So much to know and learn. What a competent team of presenters.

ColorMunki demo was very informative and interesting. I thank the X-Rite reps for answering so many questions.

I was pleased to see the products and loved the demos.

Next Meeting

The next Detroit IDUG meeting will be Thursday, October 22 at Schoolcraft College in Livonia. We’ll be Stylin’ in the “D” with style strategies and text timesavers presented by Michael Murphy, author of Adobe InDesign CS4 Styles: How to Create Better, Faster Text and Layouts and host of the popular video podcast, “The InDesigner.”