Here’s a set of RGB equivalents to some Pantone colors. Note that these are only approximations of how a given Pantone color looks to the naked eye, and any could be far, far off from the actual Pantone’s spectral response curve.
Loopydude, the point is not to prevent the copying of highly color-variant images, but of preventing the copying of low color-variant images without the loss of the information in them, while having the originals reasonably discernable by the human eye. This is possible because the spectral response curve of the scanner’s color sensors and the dyes in the printer are distinct from one another, and both are distinct from the human eye’s cones’ spectral response.
Backwater Under_Duck’s empirical tests show that it’s not merely possible in theory, but that there are actual real-world tones where it happens. However, t-bonham@scc.net makes a good point – that with the proper color filter any two distinct tones can be visually separated, even if they look exactly the same to the eye, or to a given sensor.
Am I right in understanding that you’re thinking of printing the actual patterin instructions in some kind of faint colour over a background that makes them difficult to reproduce, but at the same time, not terribly easy on the naked eye.
I think that would be a bad idea; certainly around these parts, a significant section of the knitting pattern consumer contingent is made up of elderly ladies, with not quite 20/20 eyesight.
What about a “please do not make copies” type request with hearts and flowers? A friend of mine is a musician and she has on the back lower corner of her one CD a cute request along the lines of, “Hey, we all know how to make copies of a CD, but please do not do this. Along with hurting me you will be bringing a truckload of shitty karma your way”.
You’d be surprised at how cheapskatey and dishonest little old (and young) ladies are when it comes to wanting to make copies of patterns (of almost anything) to give to friends and relatives.
Most of the would-be copyright infringers I have to explain the rules to at work are little old ladies.
Print 'em on a really light grid, since the grid is probably a pretty important part of it, right? And put a really big “DO NOT PHOTOCOPY, SCAN, REPRINT OR OTHERWISE COPY OR DISTRIBUTE THIS PATTERN FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER AT ALL. REALLY.” at the bottom.
Little old ladies might well be honest, but my point was that they also often have problems with their vision; at best, they’ll buy the pattern without looking at the text and you’re going to lose their repeat custom because of eyestrain complaints; at worst, they’ll notice the difficulty and not buy it at all.
Isn’t this one of those things where you’re inconveniencing all of the customers for the sake of penalising the dishonest ones?
Could the patterns be printed on a thin, tissue-like paper? Aren’t sewing patterns on this kind of stuff? With scanning papers to make pdfs, occasionally a thin paper with allow print on the other side of the paper to show through. It isn’t a problem when viewing it with the human eye but the scanner pulls in twice the info and makes everything hard to read.
I rather like this idea. Print the patterns large, on an oversided piece of paper. Tout it as “Large Print” and easier to read. Then you don’t need to mention the side benefit of making it difficult/annoying to copy.
How about printing the whole thing in crisp, dark text on clear, flat background and adding “For clarity of reading, this document has been printed using Transfobular Technology. Exposure to photocopying lamps may cause explosion”
Actually, not so much. It has been my experience that knitters – especially the ones online (who aren’t your stereotypical little old ladies in bifocals with big balls of yarn in their kitty-cat tote bag, knitting has become ubertrendy in the 20-30 set, especially SAHMs) – have a very tenuous grip on the concepts of copyright and intellectual property and consider any pattern or directions which are ever released to the public in any fashion to be fair game for copying, distributing, or “reworking” to get around copyright meaning that the words of the sentences are changed/rearranged but the directions are essentially identical.
I’m on roughly 18 mailing lists (think yahoo! groups) for knitters and I’d say that 80% of the traffic on those lists consists of fighting about copying patterns. It’s really quite disgusting and disheartening.
You could always embed the Eurion Constellation in your patterns. Newer copiers (and versions of Photoshop, apparently) will refuse to copy anything with this pattern.
Well, you can, but that’s only an approximation. You would probably need a test run with whatever printing technology you would be using, and a set of good-quality copiers and scanners. You might also try using a couple of color filters to see if the trick that t-bonham@scc.net mentions would make the pattern easy to copy.