the_taylor•1d agoProlific Poster

Got a call from a print shop in Austin that my entire wedding invite run came out as gray blobs because I saved everything in the wrong color space.

I designed them all in RGB on my laptop, sent the file without converting to CMYK, and the shop said the grays looked perfect on screen but came off the press as muddy silver messes, which cost me $320 in reprints and a very stressful two days begging the printer for a rush job. Has anyone else gotten burned by not double checking their file settings before shipping?

2 comments

2 Comments

luna_wells571d ago

Has this happened to anyone else where the monitor fooled you into thinking everything was fine? I learned the hard way too and now I always proof my files with a soft proofing setting in my design software before sending them off. It catches color space issues like that before they cost you extra money and stress.

wrenh791d ago

Wait, does your software have a soft proof feature or did you have to download something separate for that? I keep seeing people mention it but my design program doesn't seem to have one built in and I'm worried I'm missing something obvious. The whole RGB versus CMYK trap is brutal because our screens are so bright and saturated compared to what a printer can actually lay down on paper like those grays that look clean on screen but turn into this weird lavender sludge once it hits the press. I've started printing test swatches on my home inkjet before sending anything professional just to get a rough idea of how colors shift even though its not perfectly accurate it at least catches the really bad mismatches. The extra steps feel annoying but not as annoying as dropping hundreds on reprints let me tell you.