Blue on Blue

Artwork from the US can require careful colour matching when translated to European print profiles.

A very blue launch poster

Hollywood studios need the colour to be exact and there's no room for error. I learned that the hard way on the Avatar home entertainment launch.

Back when physical media was still the main way to watch a film at home, I was part of a team at Coutts Retail Creative (later Bezier, now Once Upon A Time) working on in-store promotional displays for a series of title launches for movies and video games. These would usually be a suite of big character standees, free-standing display units, shelf decorations, sometimes full theatrical arches, all multi-layered and built from printed cardboard.

For the Avatar launch, the key art was supplied from the US and then had to be adapted for the UK market. We ran into trouble getting our master art proofs signed off by the studio, which blocked the entire job.

The problem turned out to be the colour profile conversion from US Web Coated to FOGRA. Printers will know what I'm talking about here, but for everyone else: a colour profile is the standardised specification used to translate colours. It is essential for setting how your files are ripped by the print machines and applied to the paper stock.

Avatar's imagery is a very particular blue with cyan highlights, and it took several attempts to get the files converted to a European profile and then colour-balanced to match the supplied US printed poster art.

It was a useful lesson in how much difference the conversion process and correct colour profile make. This is made even more important when the colours you're reproducing sit in the difficult range for CMYK process printing.

Have you had a job completely held up by something technical?