Why does nobody talk about how hard it is to match greens in a palette

I was working on a brand kit for a landscaping company in Portland last month and the client wanted a 'forest green' that felt natural but also popped on screen. I picked three different greens from a few online swatch libraries and they all looked totally different once printed, like one leaned blue and another turned muddy. Do you guys stick with one system like Pantone the whole time or do you mix and match and just hope for the best?

2 comments

2 Comments

elliot_harris254d ago

Saw a color theory guy on YouTube mention that green is the hardest color to match because our eyes are so sensitive to it (something about evolution and spotting predators in forests). That stuck with me. I've tried mixing Pantone with digital RGB values before and it was a total disaster, the printed greens came out looking like swamp water or lime soda. A sign painter I know swears by buying a physical swatch book and only pulling colors from that (way easier than guessing on a screen). Maybe look into picking one green and sticking with its hex and CMYK numbers across the board, less room for ugly surprises that way.

uma8964d ago

Has anyone else ever tried to match a printed green to what you saw on screen and just sat there staring at the failures like "I made this, but why does it look like pond scum?" I've been there, it's humbling. My own attempts at converting digital greens usually end up looking like flat, sad moss or radioactive slime, so I feel your pain. That sign painter is smart, swatch books are the only way to keep your sanity when dealing with this stuff. Maybe that's why I just gave up on green altogether and stick to blues now, less heartbreak that way.