Hi,
"If I am understanding it correctly, SWOP is the standard colour space that adobe uses...."
Yes, USWebCoatedSWOP is the standard CMYK colour space you work in by default in AdobeCS. This is a space that represents the colour range of a SWOP certified litho press.
"and most designers stick to so that they can achieve a consistent colours when printing."
No, I suspect most designers stick to SWOP because they don't understand colour spaces, especially here in the UK. In the UK, if you wanted to limit to a space similar to most litho's output, you'd be better using FOGRA. In my experience most designers work in SWOP without realising, save to an untagged PDF thus not even telling the printer that SWOP was the source, and then wonder why they don't get the colour they want. (This suits me given that I help my customers with their colour communication, and if they've previously had a bad experience elsewhere my value to them is immediately apparent.)
"However by defining what colour space you are working in you can move beyond the limitations of swop and work in spaces like adobeRGB 1998 which has a much larger colour spectrum available?"
By defining the colour space you're working in you specify accurate colour. That's the first major step to good colour. Moving into a space larger than SWOP you're exactly right - more colours are available to specify. (This argument holds for CMYK spaces larger than SWOP too, it's not just an argument for switching to RGB.)
Litho won't be of use to you at the quantities you're looking at. You'll be looking at digital, either wide format, or a digital press. Many copy shops have A3 output.
Offset printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Digital printing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (surprisingly poor wiki entry here!)
"does this mean that MOST (but not all printers) will be able to print greater then the standard swop profile?"
Several answers here. The colour gamut of any printer/ink/media combination is determined by all of those factors. A super bright white paper that can hold vast quantities of ink without bleeding, printed on using extremely pure vibrant CMY inks and a perfect black has a huge potential colour gamut - regardless of whether it's digital/litho/screen or potato printing. So theoretically at least the answer to your question is yes.
But reality sucks. Heavy ink loads cockle, bleed, don't dry, papers aren't bright white, etc etc. I think a fair answer is this - nearly all printers can print beyond SWOP. But, those who are SWOP certified deliberately limit their output to the SWOP standard. The purpose of standards being to be able to have printers all over the world print the same colour on the same paper using the same colour numbers. This gets blurred as Europe uses different standards and the USA has moved on from SWOP, and most designers still use SWOP's CMYK numbers untagged... I'd expect the next version of CS to ship with something different as its default space.
With regards to wide format digital, my own area, the answer is a simple YES.
"And I should make sure that my printer understands colour spaces/ and ICC profiles before sending them any work?"
Two way communication. If you want accurate colour you need to know how to ask for it, they need to know how to understand your instruction. Can you imagine an architect not specifying exactly what units his dimensions were in, to a builder who didn't care to ask?
BUT this is only relevant if colour matters to you. People have lived with bog standard dull SWOP output, or SWOP numbers being fed directly to the printer for a range of random colours, for years! Few have cared. Search the forums. You'll find rant after rant about how the company logo on the business cards looks different to the letterhead, to the van, to the exhibition stand, to the website... but despite all the finger pointing and arguing, it's gone on for years and will keep going on until designers specify accurate colour in the first place!
I refer you back to this link
CMYK? Which CMYK ?! | Hudson Lets have an honest straw poll of people reading this. How many designers have been producing files for years, and haven't understood that 30/50/0/0 does not represent a colour until you say which CMYK it refers to? Sure it hints in the direction of a colour. But if you want to be fussier about a colour than the range shown in that link, then you have to understand how to specify accurate colour. (The reverse is true - if you never need to be more accurate than that then you don't need to worry about this at all!)
My contribution to this forum seems to be a little one track at the moment - apologies if I've bored on about this again!
Regards,
Craig