My old professor swore by printing everything as RGB first, worst advice I ever got

Back in design school over in Austin, my professor told me to always design in RGB and convert to CMYK at the very end. I followed that for my first real job at a print shop. Big mistake. I sent a client's wedding invite to press and all the pastel pinks turned into this muddy gray-brown mess. Lost that account and had to explain why 500 invites were ruined. Anyone else get burned by bad advice from a teacher that didn't work in the real world?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_roberts2214d ago

Man that's a BRUTAL lesson to learn on a real job. What ended up working for me was setting my color space to CMYK from the very start, even for rough drafts. I keep a small test print from my home printer that shows how different RGB blues look compared to what actually comes out of a commercial press. Showed that to my students when I taught a workshop and it saved them the same headache. Also learned the hard way that soft proofing in Photoshop is not a replacement for a real contract proof. Your professor meant well but probably never had to eat the cost of a ruined print run themselves.

betty_ward14d agoMost Upvoted

So wait, do you actually show the students the ruined print jobs you had to pay for or just the test prints?