Screen appearance could be the result of any number of things, for print colours you should be able to trust what you put in, if a PMS or cmyk is not printing properly that is probably because it is incorrectly specified or an element is not correctly profiled. Can you be more specific about your press problem? Which software are you using to create your artwork, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop? Is it in the creation of pdfs?

Tim

I was recently working in CS1 and had a good system.

I ran ColorSync and every App on a Colormatch 1.8 Gamma profile, and used the US Coated CMYK for typical workflow.

I would start by making a profile of my monitor with the Spyder, and use that profile for the auto screen adjustment in Quark, Indy etc.

In addition I had an IT8 callibrated software for my printer, and a third party software for my proofer/RIP.

I was letting the third party RIP handle the seps and color, and making my RGB color correction in Photoshop in the native 1.8 Gamma.

I was having good consistent color using a Mitsu Diamond Pro 2070.

Now I’m CS3 and I’m having to work through it all again. Hope that helps a little.

This PDF explains how to set-up a workflow in CS 2. It might be usable in general for you CS 1 also.

In general the monitors can be calibrated using a colorimeter for the screen. These are not too expensive, and easy to use. The big problem is the environment your are working in. It should be in total darkness, or illuminated exclusively by Normlicht that matches the chosen colour temperature of the monitor calibration.

Scanners can also be calibrated using a special scan-target and special scanner software that reads the target values, knows what they should be, and generates a ICC-profile for that scanner.

The most complicated situation is the printing situation. Some printers have a build in colorimeter that can scan a print of test swatches and create an ICC-profile for the combination of print-heads, ink-cartridges, paper/substrate, temperature, and humidity. I have one of those, and you can match your output very very close to eg. EuroScale CMYK and also a lot of PMS colours outside the CMYK gamut, but it only works when viewed in normlicht, in other lighting conditions the characteristics of the ink and substrate doesn’t longer compare to, say, EuroScale if that was the case.

Some RIP-software to control this nightmare is of course required. Same goes for the very expensive Xerox laserprinters who often use an external Fiery RIP to do the colour control.

In CS (any) you have the luxury of being able to do a mixed RGB and CMYK workflow. What I do is keep all colour scans and photos in RGB mode. All logos and elements that need EuroScale CMYK matching are in EuroScale CMYK. When the elements are combined in an InD