CMYK Color Model

At present this program uses the colorsync generic CMYK ICC color profile provided by the Mac operating system. We may incorporate other ICC profiles, as well as eps support in the future. If your design is in cmyk or rgb then your results will be in cmyk. If your design is grayscale then scan using grayscale on the menu. How your pdf is generated is important. Professional Design programs will generate pdf's correctly retaining the cmyk model as well as spot colors. The pdf is the file format chosen since it contains information such as page size, and can contain a variety of graphics such as vector. Since the Mac's native file format is the pdf - it works well.

If your customer supplies you a print ready pdf file and it is rgb instead the program will read it by converting the rgb values to cmyk - which is what your printer will do. The resulting print will have cmyk type(fonts) as well. The resulting cost will be 2 or 3 times higher than if the pdf where exported correctly.

Cost Analysis

After doing many test we have found that this program give's us a realistic picture of coverage and costs used. Our business is printing too. So we know what it is like printing blind when it comes to digital printing. One of our factors on pricing digital printing is coverage. We use this program to estimate consumable costs used by the printer. These costs are marked up with other costs of printing. While the coverage program gives us an estimate of the cost; it gives us a consistent way to quote.
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Test Your Files

Fill free to experiment by filling out different printer profiles. Or create different swatch tests from your design software and export to a pdf. See if it retains your cmyk. For example: create an 8.5x11 document and use a box that is the size of your document with fill set to yellow-5% magenta-5% cyan-5% and black-100%. See how Ink Coverage© reads it.
I have a few test pdf files that have been exported using InDesign© by Adobe. Feel free to download.
Click here to download a 1.3MG zip file containing pdf color test files.