It’s not a big surprise when we receive art directly from customers and they’ve used colors that simply aren’t reproduceable in process color printing. Some of the very popular tools for creating design projects operate solely in the RGB and Hexcode color spaces…Canva lives on a server somewhere and almost everything done there is destined for online display.
It’s more surprising when professionals provide files using RGB colors when they are intending for a project to be printed. Sadly, I think many younger graphic designers were never really given all the information about the different color spaces…and some of them wouldn’t even know the term “color spaces,” for that matter.
Gimme Some Space(s)!
If you’re using Photoshop, you can see the different color space options by going to the Image menu and Mode submenu…Bitmap, Grayscale, Duotone, Indexed Color, RGB, CMYK, Lab, and Multichannel are all options (depending on what the current color mode is)…and you can choose from multiple options for bits/channel (although 8 is the most compatible).
Here’s the best way I have to think about color space. In the world around us, the average human eye has the ability to see about 1 million colors of the 100s of millions (or is it billions?) that actually exist. A computer has the capability to display somewhere around 16 million colors. CMYK printing (“full process color”) can produce about 16,000 colors.
16,000 vs 16,000,000…that’s a BIG difference…and even if most people can’t see more than 1,000,000 or so, that’s still much larger than 16,000. What does it all mean in practice?
Something Shifty Is Going On!
When you print something out on a printing press, it uses percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to create those 16,000 colors. If you send a photo that is saved as RGB to that printer, the colors will be reduced. There’s no getting around it. If you send a piece of art (a logo, for instance) that is saved with the perfect Hexcode colors for website rendering to a printing press…you will see colors shift.
The best practice is to convert the color space yourself. Change photos from RGB to CMYK. Find the best equivalent process colors for your logo inside Illustrator. Make the choices yourself, because if you don’t the software between the print shop’s computer and the printing press will make that decision for you!
Color Space Problem Children
There are certain colors that are more difficult to convert from RGB to CMYK than others. Neon colors of any type are problematic, but in my experience bright greens are one of the worst. Bright magentas (hot pinks) and some reds also tend to get dull. A good graphic design professional should be able to color correct in CMYK to lessen the change, but there’s no way to totally avoid it.
That’s About It!
I tried not to get too “in the weeds” on this topic today…but I did just want to throw out some basic information about the way most people are designing products these days and explain why they might be disappointed with the finished printed product. There’s a lot more to discuss (don’t get me into “additive color” vs “subtractive color”) but I hope this gives you a better understanding and maybe informs the way you approach your print jobs in the future. As always, reach out to us here at Print Cubes if you have any questions.