Look Ma! No Pantone Guides? (how to get color right for print)

[piku]

Question for those that do a lot of print work. I work currently on AI CS2, and have no pantone guides to help me be sure that the colors I use on the screen come out right on print. One reason being, its expensive.

Anyways, for those that are on the same boat, or currently misplaced their guides... what do you do to ensure that your design works? (w/o printing them too... yah, i'm poh)

TIA

[maccie]

You will never be sure the color is right until it is printed (press).
In fact, there are only 2 things very imported:
1. is your monitor calibrated?
2. your CS color settings?
It is very hard to calibrate when you have no reference at alls, like a pantone book. However, when you print pantone colors in CMYK, it will NEVER look the same. I know, because I've made pantone color inks for over 10 years.
In CS I use the standard "Europe Prepress Defaults" settings (I'm in Belgium, so..). There is also an "American Prepress Default" setting. Also use the same setting in photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, indesign... You can make your own settings, save it and use it in all these programms. Make sure you are working in CMYK color space.
My screen(s) are apple cinema displays and I use the standard profile for these screens.
If you do the above, you can be pretty sure that the printed colors will match with what you screen on screen. Be aware of blue-purple colors! 100% cyaan + 80% magenta= purple, your screen can be just dark-blue. Keep these simple things in mind.
Hope this helps you a bit.