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TIL a business card I designed in RGB looked great on my screen and came out purple gray at the print shop in Akron
I put together a card for a buddy's lawn service last year using bright grass green and a deep navy blue in RGB, and it looked perfect on my monitor. When the shop in Akron handed me the box, the navy had shifted to this muddy purple gray and the green looked flat and lifeless next to it. I had no clue back then that those colors were never going to survive the trip to CMYK, since a screen mixes light and ink mixes pigment. Now I always check the soft proof before I send anything out, even if the difference looks tiny. Anyone got a good trick for picking blues that hold up in print, because that purple gray still bugs me.
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evand657d ago
That purple gray thing is so real, had the same mess with a deep navy on some shirts for my cousin's shop. The printer told me a lot of those rich dark blues in RGB are built on red and blue light mixing, but when ink lays down it just turns muddy gray once the cyan and magenta don't line up right. What saved me was switching to Pantone for the blues, a solid spot color holds way better than trying to fake it in CMYK. If spot colors are too pricey for the job, pull a CMYK swatch book and pick your blue from actual printed samples instead of trusting the screen.
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