While commercial printers can achieve near-perfect calibration of their printing press with Dragon Tone, perfectly calibrated presses don't always produce the results that customers want. Today, digital files are created on computers and initial proofs are often produced on consumer-grade printers – both processes of which can have varying colour calibrations, producing results with different attributes. The result can be files that appear to be perfect to the designer or publisher's eye, but are actually far from tonally neutral. In these cases, the perfect reproduction, when outputted on a Dragon Tone-calibrated press, might be different from what the customer actually had in mind.
There are two ways to solve this problem. Either the customer takes the files back and then correctly calibrates the colour for commercial printing, or the commercial printer estimates the adjustment required of the colour mix and then outputs the customer's desired print. While this method can be apply to meet customer expectations, it is almost impossible to repeat for future editions.

In these cases, Dragon Tone is also applicable, not by establishing the perfect tone for each press, but by highlighting the difference that each customer wants. Due to the innovative layout of the colour coding system of Dragon Tone, printers can still establish consistency of prints by comparing the variance that each customer wants for their print. Each print is then printed to a standardised tonal profile – although this is no longer the perfect neutral tone.