c/cmyk-hack-lab

Pantone book from 1998 still beats my phone app for matching

Everyone on here seems to rely on those color match apps, but I swear my old Pantone book from '98 nails the greens way better. Did a reprint run last week for a customer in Denver, and the book matched the swatch they brought in, the app said something else entirely. Anyone else keep a physical book around just for sanity checks?

My magenta kept shifting on white tees until I checked the humidity

Last Friday I was printing a batch of 40 white tees for a local band and the magenta on the second screen came out way pinker than the first one I pulled. I checked the ink, the mesh count, even swapped out the squeegee, but it turned out the dehumidifier in my garage had died overnight and the paper proofs were picking up moisture. Has anyone else had their spot colors drift based on air moisture, and did you solve it with a cheap hygrometer or something else?

That $40 'color wizard' pen turned my greens into mud

I saw this ad for a little pen that reads color off your screen and claims to match it to ink. Spent $40 on Tuesday and figured I'd nail the exact green for a client's tee order. First use was great, but the next morning every print came out dull and brownish. Turns out the pen needs a warm-up calibration in their app, which nobody tells you about, and it drained my phone battery twice. I fixed it by trusting my old Pantone deck and eyeballing, still burned the $40. Has anyone else tried those screen-reader pens or should I just stick with the paper swatches for good?

My greens keep printing muddy on dark shirts, need a fix

Got a batch of 40 shirts back from the shop last Tuesday and every single green looked brownish. I used the same CMYK values I always do, 60C 0M 100Y 10K. The proof on screen was perfect. The shop said it's the dark cotton base messing with the halftone. I tried a white underbase but it made the green too neon. Should I bump the yellow to 120 or switch to a spot color for this one? Anyone else fight this with forest green on black tees?

Pantone vs my cheap grocery store packaging, the green lied to me

Last Tuesday I grabbed a jar of salsa because the label had this perfect forest green I've been trying to match for a client's logo. I scanned it with my phone and pulled the RGB values, but when I printed a test run on cotton shirts, it came out way too yellow. Turns out that packaging green is printed with a spot color, not CMYK, so the CMYK breakdown I got was just a cheap simulation. I had to tweak my cyan to 78% and yellow to 61% with a 22% black underlay to get close, but it still shifts under different light. Has anyone else chased a green from a food wrapper and ended up adjusting their halftone dot shape to fix it?

TIL the Pantone book I trusted was 8 years outdated

Spent 6 hours chasing a green that kept coming out olive in Columbus, turned out the 2016 coated guide I'd been using had shifted more than I thought, replaced it with a 2024 edition and the same formula finally printed exactly right, has anyone else had a whole color match go sideways from an old swatch book?

My big green shift after 6 months of fighting plastisol

For the longest time I swore custom mixing plastisol by eye was the only way to get that forest green on hoodies. Last Tuesday I ran 40 shirts with a pantone fan deck and a scale. Weighed every batch to the gram. Zero reprints. That never happened in 6 months of eyeballing it. What finally convinced me was a pal who runs a shop in Portland, he told me "your process is guessing with extra steps." He was right. Has anyone else switched to measured mixing and seen their waste drop, or am I the last one to catch on?

That Pantone book at the print shop in Akron was 4 years out of date

A local printer told me my greens looked muddy because I was eyeballing from my monitor. Handed me their Pantone book and said pick from here. I did. Then the actual shirts came back a totally different green than the swatch. Turns out their book was from 2019 and the inks they use now shifted. I went home, ordered a new book, and now I just ask them for a physical proof before I pay for a full run. Has anyone else had a shop swear by old swatch books that are clearly stale?

The Pantone book at my local print shop fixed my orange problem

Been chasing this burnt orange for a client's hoodies for 2 weeks. Kept tweaking CMYK values in Photoshop and every test print came out too pink or too brown. Yesterday the guy at Rapid Press in Denver let me flip through their Pantone book and I found the exact chip. Matched it in 10 minutes. Why did I waste 14 days guessing when this thing has been sitting in every shop I walk into? Anyone else skip the obvious tools and overthink it?

I finally stopped using the default black for dark shirts and it fixed my green every time

So I run a small print shop out of my garage and for months I kept getting this muddy green on black tees. I tried adjusting the ink density, I tried different screens, I even swapped my mesh count twice. Nothing worked. Then my buddy who does vinyl cutting told me to stop using straight C100 M0 Y100 K100 and switch to a richer black underbase, like C60 M40 Y40 K100. At first I thought he was nuts because that's more ink and more cost. But I tried it on a rush order last Tuesday and the green finally popped. Now here's the thing, I see old timers swear by the simple black underbase and new guys say you need the trap layers. Which side are you on? Does a rich black underbase actually matter for spot colors or is it just overthinking a simple job? I'm curious if anyone else has had the exact opposite experience where the rich black made things worse on certain shirt materials.

My dark blues kept coming out purple until I switched my black channel

I run a DTG printer in Austin and noticed my navy shirts were shifting purple after about 60 prints, turns out my black ink was weak and the cyan was doing all the work. Swapped to a high-density black profile and now the blue stays blue, anyone else seen this with their DTG setup?

PMS vs CMYK for a client logo, I was wrong for 6 years

PMS vs CMYK for a client logo, I was wrong for 6 years. I always pushed CMYK for everything because it's cheaper and most shops default to it. Then last month I did a run of 120 shirts for a food truck in Austin and their orange came out looking like a faded traffic cone. Client was pissed, I was confused, we tested everything. Finally the press operator ran a spot color just for that orange and it popped exactly like their brand. Turns out CMYK can't hit that bright fluorescent-ish orange no matter how much you tweak the curves. I switched my whole process now, I ask about spot colors first for any logo with a bold custom color. Anyone else have a color that just refuses to work in CMYK and forced them to change their approach?

CMYK calibration app saved my green after 11 failed shirts

Last month I kept getting olive drab instead of forest green on shirts, so I tried one of those phone apps that reads your screen and compares it to a test print. Turns out my monitor was running way too blue, and the app showed me the exact gamma shift. I recalibrated with just $12 worth of test sheets and a cheap colorimeter, now my greens match almost perfectly. Anybody else trust those phone-based calibration tools, or do you still pay for the expensive hardware?

That faded green on my sample shirt looked like a whole different color after 48 hours

I left a test print of my go-to forest green on the shop counter in Tampa over the weekend, and when I got back Monday it had turned this weird olive-moss shade. Turns out the print shop had my CMYK breakdown set to 60/0/100/20 but the ink sat too long before curing, so the yellow just soaked in differently. Has anyone else had a color shift like that just from waiting a day, or do I need to bake my samples faster?

Overprint vs. knockout for white text on dark shirts... which side are you on?

Last month at a shop in Austin, a veteran printer told me to always set white text to overprint on dark garments, swore it keeps edges crisp. But my own test at 300 DPI showed knockout gave me a cleaner white with no ghosting around the letters. Now I'm stuck, because half the forums swear by overprint for speed, the other half say knockout is the only way to avoid the halo. Anyone else run into a printer with a hard rule that contradicts your own results?

Stop trusting your monitor's green, it's lying to you

Spent 3 days retrying a forest green design for a client in Austin and every print came out olive, turns out my screen was showing sRGB while the printer wanted a specific coated Fogra profile. Check your color management settings before you burn another $80 in samples, has anyone else had this fight with soft proofing?

Tried faking a navy blue with just cyan and black and got a weird purple mess

So I was screen printing a batch of 50 tees last weekend and ran out of my usual blue mix halfway through. I figured hey, I can just blend more cyan with some black and it'll look close enough, right? Wrong. The first 12 shirts came out looking like a bruised plum instead of navy. I had to strip the screens and start over, which cost me an extra 3 hours and like $20 in wasted ink. Learned the hard way that you need at least a tiny bit of magenta to get a true dark blue. Has anyone else found a cheap workaround for mixing dark colors without buying a ton of extra bases?

Rant: My "perfect" neon green came out looking like baby poop yellow

I spent 3 days tweaking a neon green for a shirt drop I was doing last month. On screen it looked AMAZING. That bright electric lime vibe. I sent it to the printer with a spot color swatch and everything. When I got the proof back it was this muddy yellow green. I was SO mad. Turns out the printer's RIP software was auto converting my spot green to CMYK using a default profile. I had to call them and demand they turn off color management for that plate. They acted like I was annoying but it fixed it. Has anyone else had a printer mess up your spot colors because of their settings?

The magenta trap that ruins every neon orange I try

I keep seeing people post their neon orange prints and they look like a faded peach in real life. The problem is almost always the same: they are mixing CMYK like it is RGB, pumping up yellow and a tiny bit of magenta. But real neon orange needs a heavy magenta base, like 30-35% at least, before you even touch the yellow. I figured this out after ruining six test prints on a batch of hoodies for a local bike shop in Portland. The shop owner literally said "that looks nothing like the screen" and I had to eat the cost of the blanks. Once I dropped the yellow by 10% and let magenta do the heavy lifting, the orange popped like a traffic cone. Has anyone else hit this wall with high-vis colors or am I the only one who learned this the hard way?

Why does 100% cyan and yellow still look like a weird lime green on my prints?

I finally gave in and tried printing a test shirt with just straight 100C/100Y on a dark tee thinking I'd get a perfect bright green. Instead it came out looking like a faded neon lime with a grayish undertone. Super disappointing after spending 40 minutes setting up the screens. I learned you gotta add a touch of black to really get that solid rich green. Anybody else struggle with getting greens to pop on dark fabric?

Worst week for matching greens on a hoodie order out of Dallas

Had a whole week where the cyan kept pulling too blue and the yellow was too weak, and after 3 test runs I still ended up with a weird teal that the client said looked like a swamp monster.

Switched from coated to uncoated paper for my t-shirt mockups

I always used coated paper for proofing my shirt designs because the colors popped better, but last month I tried uncoated after a printer told me it mimics fabric absorption more closely. The greens and blues came out duller at first, but my final print matched the proof way closer than before - no more surprises. Has anyone else made the switch and found a good way to adjust their screen brightness to compensate for the difference?

Three months to nail a bright orange on cotton tees

Back when I used to eyeball CMYK values instead of measuring

I remember starting out with t-shirt printing back in 2015 and thinking I could just guess the magenta and yellow mix for a good red. One batch of 50 shirts for a local band in Portland came out looking more orange than a traffic cone. Had to reprint the whole order and ate the cost of the screens. Now I always check my density readings with a spectrophotometer before I burn a single screen. Has anyone else ruined a run by trusting their eyes too much?

Hit 97% color match on a tricky olive green after 8 tries

I was printing a batch of shirts for a friend's landscaping company out in Austin, and that olive green just would not come out right. After 7 failed prints and a lot of wasted ink, I finally hit 97% match by swapping my cyan to a 22% value instead of 18%. Anyone else found a weird little number tweak that fixed a color for you?