Spent a whole afternoon trying to match a client's exact shade of 'sunset orange'

I was working on a branding project and the client sent a photo of a sunset as their color reference. I figured it would be a quick color pick, but nothing I pulled looked right on screen versus the printed mood board they had. It took me about 4 hours of tweaking CMYK values and printing test swatches to finally get it. Has anyone else had a color matching process just completely blow up their schedule?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas_miller2mo ago

Read an article once that said our eyes see millions more colors than any printer can make. That sunset orange probably has light hitting it in a way ink just can't copy. Makes you want to hand clients a book on color theory sometimes.

pipergonzalez2mo ago

What is it about clients and sunsets? They see a color in real life and think it will just pop out of a printer... I had one ask for "stormy sea gray" and it turned into a whole thing with pantone books and sad little test strips. Sometimes I wonder if they know screens and ink are totally different beasts.

terry_mitchell1mo ago

Honestly, the real problem is that a color in a photo is already a translation. The camera didn't see it the way their eyes did, so you're trying to copy a copy. You're matching a digital version of their memory, which is a losing game from the start. Maybe we should ask for the time of day and location to look up atmospheric data instead. That might get us closer to the original light conditions than a phone picture ever could.

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