Quark Forums

Anyone know of a non-Pantone process color guide?  I only work in CMYK thus Pantone is of little use to me.  I'm looking for something simple, even something like a PDF file I can download and print here on my own printer, that would be good enough.

Any suggestions?  The Pantone guides which have process mixes, too, are too expensive and overkill for my needs.

In an older copy of "Real World QuarkXPress," David Blatner speaks well of the TruMatch CMYK system. These colors can be accessed in Quark the same as Pantone colors--at least they can in QXP 6. As far as a real swatch book, though, they're not giving them away: USD $85 at trumatch.com.

I bought a book entitled The Home Color Selector by David Willis at Barnes & Noble for $7.98. It is not as complete as the pantone materials but is a bargain to us. It has colors that go together in all sort of combinations. The book also contains adjacent, complementary and accent colors. The CMYK combinations are listed in the back. I hope this helps.

Be careful with such guides: color reproduction is paper + inks + press dependent, so you'd have to manipulate as much guides.

Pantone swatches have indeed 2 variants: coated and uncoated (inks are theirs). Printed results are supposed to match those swatches so the printer person must do his best to manage his settings.

I think the best is to ask your service provider wether he gets such a guide. If not, maybe you could layout a maximum of swatches in the margins and ask your service provider to get a sample after cut. Just a thought.

Don't know what your budget is...the Tintbook is $55 (that looks like a sale price, it's $70-90 elsewhere) and I've found it useful:

http://www.tintbooks.com/products.asp

Of course the colors will vary somewhat due to press/stock/ink variations, but it can definitely get you in the ballpark.