Specifications

The Digital Fine Print Course
Refining a Fine Print
Out of Gamut Colours
Saturated colours such as the green paint of this car can be accurately captured on film
or with a DSLR camera. Many of these colours can also be preserved in the Adobe RGB
(1998) working colour space. However once printed they becomes dull and lifeless.
Copyright Les Walkling 2012
26/50
Adobe RGB 1998 (Working Space Profile)
U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 (Press profile)
Many of the colours in this image (35.4%
∆E2000 > 2.0) lie outside of the US Web
Coated (SWOP) v2. press profile. This
means that they can’t be accurately repro-
duced in this print space. The SWOP pro-
file will render them as the closest but not
identical match to the original colours.
SWOP v2
Green Duco
The Colormetric tables in the US Web Coated
(SWOP) v2 press profile will compress many of
the out-of-gamut colours into a very small
range of colours, even rendering different
shades as a single colour. For example in the
right hand diagram, many of the greens in the
car duco are being mapped into the same point
(the same colour) in the SWOP v2 colour space.
This is why the colours are rendered as a flat,
dull, undifferentiated composite green in print.
Many greens
are rendered
the same green
SWOP v2