I am currently working in illustrator and am quite a amateur!!
Ok so Here is the process I follow to try ensure the flatbed digital printer prints my colours correctly.
-Open up artwork(PDF) from client
-Save a copy(AI) to create master file [Ive found that in this process of saving an Ai file, unchecking the "Use compression" tickbox has dramatically improved my colour but it is still not perfect]
- Now in my master file ,set up CMYK Values I require on my design
-Once my Design is complete, I Save A copy (PDF)
-I open the PDF I have just saved, in Photoshop to create an EPS with the actions function, for my print department [I know you can create an EPS directly from illustrator but to have the correct crop/tig marks and blleds, this is simply the easiest way]
-They then open our EPS and do their set up.
Our colour output from the printer is not correct and we cant seem to match it to what we require .
For example we were trying to match- 640c pantone /cmyk 100 / 11 / 3 / 16 and the closest we got was printing 100% cyan :/ which is tremendously wrong!!
Please help
Ben