Color shift after swapping to matte paper caught me off guard

I printed 200 business cards for a local coffee shop on plain gloss stock and they looked great. Then they wanted a reprint on matte paper to match their new packaging. I ran the same file, same printer settings, same everything. The matte version came out way darker and the warm brown turned greenish. I spent about 3 hours adjusting curves and printing test strips before I got it close. Did not realize how much the paper finish changes the color until I saw them side by side. Has anyone else had a brand color look totally different just from switching paper types?

2 comments

2 Comments

troy_butler77d ago

I mean, three hours of curve tweaking seems a bit much for some business cards though.

felix4887d ago

Wait, did you calibrate your monitor to the matte paper BEFORE you started adjusting curves? Because I've seen people spend HOURS tweaking curves only to realize their screen was showing the gloss version as a reference the whole time. That mismatch between what you see and what prints is a TOTAL trap, especially with matte papers since they absorb ink differently than glossy. I'm also curious - did you check if the ICC profile you were using was actually for that specific matte paper brand? Because a generic "matte paper" profile can be WAY off compared to the manufacturer's own profile. And on top of that, matte papers tend to have a warmer or cooler tint in the base, so that might explain why your warm brown went greenish if the paper had a blue undertone fighting it.