Used to proof everything in RGB and wondered why prints looked like trash

Honestly, for like two years straight I just exported straight from screen without ever converting to CMYK. Last week I finally did a test run on a simple poster with a heavy teal gradient and the print came out looking like muddy green soup. Now I soft proof in Illustrator first and tweak the saturation curve to get it closer to what I see. Has anyone else had to rebuild a whole color palette because of this?

2 comments

2 Comments

josephf103d ago

I used to think soft proofing was just a waste of time. I figured if it looked good on my monitor it would print fine. Then I did a batch of bookmarks with a dark blue background and they came back looking almost purple. That was the moment I realized my screen and the printer had completely different ideas about what blue looks like. I ended up redoing my whole color library from scratch, matching each swatch to a physical print sample. It was a headache but now my stuff actually comes out looking like I intended.

alicebarnes3d ago

Tbh I felt that pain just reading this. I can’t believe you had to rebuild your entire color library from scratch though. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.