Watched a coworker export a whole brochure in RGB and the client was furious

I was standing over his shoulder at the shop in Cincinnati when he hit export without checking the color mode, and the blues came out purple on the proof sheet. He swore the screen showed the right colors but our RIP software laughed at him. Has anyone else had to rebuild a project from scratch because of this old mistake?

2 comments

2 Comments

grant_torres6d ago

Yeah, soft proofing is the only way to catch that kind of nonsense before it hits paper. The RIP software usually wins that fight, and your coworker found out the hard way. Once the blues turn purple, you are basically starting over.

the_sage6d ago

The real kicker is that most shared printers and office copiers default to RGB profile anyway. I had a guy at a print shop in Columbus tell me half the time the color shift happens because the machine overrides the CMYK conversion with its own weird internal mapping. Your coworker probably got double teamed by his own export settings and the printer's firmware. That's why I always soft proof against the specific machine's ICC profile before sending anything.