Doing the research for my recent posts on optimizing image quality provided a great opportunity for me to review our internal color workflow. Along with Sarah Purdy, the head of our color department, and Tim Navin, our IT jack-of-all-trades who has a long background in color printing, I examined our color workflow all the way from your desktop to our presses. One of the key facts that surfaced in this investigation was that our CMYK digital presses have larger gamuts than CMYK offset presses. The image above shows the difference: the larger, grayed-out area shows the gamut for our Xerox cp1000 digital press, the smaller, inner area the GRACoL offset press gamut. As a result, we’ve created new color settings files and PDF job options files for you to use when you’re preparing color covers and color books for printing, so you can take advantage of the larger gamut.

New Color Settings and Job Options Files

We developed our new color setting and job options files by running printing tests to determine which method of processing files resulted in the richest color. The key change is that when you use the new job options file, your RGB image files are not converted to CMYK when you create the PDF. Instead, we allow our Raster Image Processor (RIP) to make the conversion using target color profiles calibrated to our Xerox 1000 large-gamut digital presses.

Here are the files to install to optimize your files for printing with Bookmobile’s large-gamut digital presses:

  • Bookmobile-Xerox cp1000 ICC profile.
  • Bookmobile Color Settings file.
  • Bookmobile PDF Job Options file.

Downloads and instructions are here.

Need a printing quote or more information?

I’d be happy to answer questions—you can contact me via email.
 You can request a printing quote here.

Don Leeper is founder and CEO of Bookmobile, which has provided design, printing, eBook and distribution services for book publishers since 1982. He set up his first darkroom in a basement bathroom in fifth grade and has worked as a professional photographer. He continues to satisfy his love of photography through appreciation of great images, an interest in photographic technology, and trying to improve his own photography.