Switched from RGB to CMYK palettes mid-project and it saved my print run

I was working on a brochure for a local plumbing company in Tacoma. Old me would just pick colors on screen and hope for the best. Now I start with CMYK values from the beginning. The greens on the screen looked fine but the printed sample came out this muddy olive. Switched my whole palette to CMYK-friendly numbers and the final job from the printer actually matched. Anyone else have that moment where your screen colors just lie to you?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordangibson15d ago

My buddy had a similar shock when his neon orange logo came out looking like a traffic cone.

lucas15915d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree with that approach. @jordangibson your buddy's traffic cone story is funny but that just means he picked the wrong orange for the job. Screens are actually pretty good about showing colors if you know how they work. RGB is for screens, CMYK is for paper, plain and simple. If you design in RGB and hope it prints right, thats on you for skipping the color management step. Soft-proofing in your design software takes like two minutes and shows you exactly how it will come out on paper. The real trick is calibrating your monitor with a hardware puck once a month instead of just guessing.