Print-ready Color Issues

[Nick72310]

I don't know much about color formats and color profiles, so I could use some help. I have a project that I plan to get professionally printed. However, I tried printing on my home printer as well as FedEx Office and the colors are drastically different from my monitor (Dell UltraSharp U3415W PXF9 34" Curved LED-Lit Monitor). When printed, my purple looks like blue, and my light gray looks dark, etc.

I have my document setup as Print-ready with CMYK/8 and all my colors have been created using the CMYK slider. This has been the case since I first started this document.

 

So, I have a couple questions:

1. Am I doing something wrong?

2. What is a color profile?

3. How do I prevent this from happening when I get it professionally printed? (I think they want PDF, but may accept other formats)

 

Thank you in advance!

I attached a couple images of my Document Setup and CMYK Slider.

[A_B_C]

Hi Nick,

 

the problem is that you will have to implement a minimum colour management workflow in order to avoid the issues you are currently experiencing. Unless your monitor is calibrated and you set up a color management chain in your design and production process, you will be inevitably suffer from unexpected results of the kind you describe. There are a lot of colour management guides on the web, in different levels of detail, for instance these ones:

 

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WS52323996-D045-437d-BD45-04955E987DFB.html

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WSBB0A8512-8151-408c-9F79-4A9E9E3BA84C.html

http://www.color-management-guide.com/color-management-summary.html

 

I believe it would be helpful to have a look at these resources or to perform a web search yourself. Furthermore, you must have in mind that most home printers will expect data in RGB format. The printer drivers will then do the appropriate conversion from RGB to CMYK to ensure the best results from your digital files. See, for instance:

 

http://www.justskins.com/forums/rgb-or-cmyk-87425.html

 

But since your objective is having your files printed by a print shop, you are correct in choosing the CMYK mode. In any case, I hope the provided links will help you for the moment. Should you have further questions, please report back …  :)

 

Cheers, Alex

[rmar]

I found this video helpful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykOVVuFLsZA&feature=youtu.be&t=108

It's a long video but he explains things pretty well.

 

This is his followup result video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VZ9w2Vy3E

[anon1]

Hi Nick,

 

the problem is that you will have to implement a minimum colour management workflow in order to avoid the issues you are currently experiencing. Unless your monitor is calibrated and you set up a color management chain in your design and production process, you will be inevitably suffer from unexpected results of the kind you describe. There are a lot of colour management guides on the web, in different levels of detail, for instance these ones:

 

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WS52323996-D045-437d-BD45-04955E987DFB.html

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/creativesuite/cs/using/WSBB0A8512-8151-408c-9F79-4A9E9E3BA84C.html

http://www.color-management-guide.com/color-management-summary.html

 

I believe it would be helpful to have a look at these resources or to perform a web search yourself. Furthermore, you must have in mind that most home printers will expect data in RGB format. The printer drivers will then do the appropriate conversion from RGB to CMYK to ensure the best results from your digital files. See, for instance:

 

http://www.justskins.com/forums/rgb-or-cmyk-87425.html

 

But since your objective is having your files printed by a print shop, you are correct in choosing the CMYK mode. In any case, I hope the provided links will help you for the moment. Should you have further questions, please report back …  :)

 

Cheers, Alex

well...

like actually you can also get accurate results without a calibrated monitor 

you can either have specific values set that you want to match or you can have a book with printed examples, choose the ones you like and get their numbers out of the book

 

in the end, even a calibrated monitor can not display CMYK color so doing color correction "by the numbers" is at least a good/ necessary addition

 

Affinity has a nice feature called Softproof that does part of this job, shows you which (1)colors do not fit your printer 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/32516-soft-proof-in-practice/?p=158109

 

 

I don't know much about color formats and color profiles

 

I tried to break color management down as much as possible here

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/33820-color-profiles-management/?p=165094

 

 

one advice I can give to reduce the error-possibilitys is to not work in CMYK

If you work in a Colorspace that is covered by your monitor (use sRGB) and then convert into CMYK, you won't get the benefits of the larger gamut of CMYK, but you won't be surprised by (2)colors that you could not see on your screen.

 

hope that is helpful  :)

 

* (1) (2) these are the reasons why your print does not look as desired 

[A_B_C]

Oh, I forgot about your post, sorry …  :)