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pmccb1002
Inspiring
June 20, 2019
Question

Color variation in printed items

  • June 20, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 879 views

Hi there,

I just had a round of business cards delivered from VistaPrint Corporate. The color on them is slightly off from my previous print jobs, despite the fact that they are based on the same source file built in InDesign CS 5.5. The card on top is from an older print run and that is what I would like the lower card to match in terms of color. It's more of a Robin's Egg Blue whereas the lower one has a slightly more faded jeans look. The is the second print run I've received from VistaPrint of the lower card where the color is off (the stock was also off in the last run, but they now match). I have not had this problem before, despite printing numerous rounds of cards.

I don't really know much about color profiles or conversion. I did have a print job a few months ago where a different printer had me change a few of my PDF export settings and I'm wondering if I may have done something that's causing the files to export/print differently.

These are my current default PDF output settings in InDesign. I don't typically touch these.

This is what the printer had me change my settings to at the time:

Here's a PDF of that same image in case it's not readable.

Finally, here's a PDF of the older card and one of the newer card. I looked through the color settings I could find and they appeared to match.

Is there something different about the old file and the new file that's making them print differently? Or is this just an issue on the printer's end? As I mentioned, I've printed numerous rounds of these cards before with VistaPrint and never had a problem until now and now I've had it on two runs in a row.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 20, 2019

Vista's production is highly automated, which gets you the price. There's no human looking to match your earlier round, so their color is going to vary. Did you complain? In my experience they will simply do a reprint at no charge.

Community Expert
June 20, 2019

The older card and newer card (if untouched by printer) should have produced the same results. If the newer card is the actually PDF sent to printer, the printer could have interacted with PDF (because there is no bleed) and then we will never know the properties of the PDF sent to device.

Frans v.d. Geest
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 20, 2019

Vista Print, that says it all! They print there were there is a surplus, in other words: can be France, can be Portugal, even China, in short everywhere; sometimes you get a good printer sometimes a cheap lousy one. Pay some more and get a good printer.