Update: I was a hardcore RGB snob until a business card job in Austin proved me wrong

I used to think converting to CMYK early was a waste of time. Then I designed a set of business cards for a client, and the green they picked on screen turned into a muddy brown on the proof. I had to redo the whole file with a CMYK profile before sending it to the printer. Three rounds of revisions later, I finally stopped ignoring color mode settings. Has anyone else had a specific color that just refuses to translate?

2 comments

2 Comments

felix4889d ago

Wait, are you seriously blaming the color mode for your green turning brown? That sounds like a monitor calibration problem or a cheap print shop issue, not a CMYK conversion thing. I've been designing for years and always work in RGB until the very last step. If your screen shows green but prints brown, your monitor is probably way off or the printer's color management is broken. CMYK is just a math formula, not magic that fixes bad screens. Also why are you doing three rounds of revisions for a business card? That's on you for not proofing with a proper contract proof first, not on RGB. The real trick is to get a good monitor profiler and ask the printer for their specific icc profile before you even start. If the client picks a neon green on their phone, yeah it's gonna look different on paper no matter what mode you use.

uma_patel199d ago

CMYK is just a math formula, not magic" - that's exactly what I used to say until my own screens bit me too. I had a client's dark purple that looked fine on my calibrated monitor but printed as almost black, and I swore by RGB until that disaster. Now I'm the one double checking profiles before sending anything to print, because seeing it fail once was enough to make me stop arguing about it.