colour problems

rodw · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:47 pm Post subject: colour problems

Hi I'm an old fellow (69) new to this, so forgive me if I make a mistake or two, Firstly I have CS2 on windows xp and a brand new printer, a Brother dcp150c ink jet, now to my problem my wife does greeting cards and sells them at the local markets, unfortunatly the colour on the screen is not the colour that comes out of the printer, where the colours should be vibrant, it comes out pale and wishy washy , I have to darken the image in photoshop to get any where near the colour required.
I have set up the screen (probably wrong) using adobe gamma and I have tweeked the colour settings on the printer to no avail, but if I don't get this right I'm just wasting Ink & card, so it is my hope that some of you experienced people can guide me through this minefield of colour on screen versus colour at printer
Thanks for your time
rodw.

Matt · VIP

Hi rodw,

I'm assuming you're working with the full version of Photoshop? If you're creating your artwork inside the RGB colour space it's possible that some of your colours are falling outside the printable range. This is because the target colour space that the printer will use to print the image is CMYK, and unfortunately CMYK doesn't support all colours from RGB.

For a preview of how the colour conversion will handle your image go to View > Proof Setup > Working CMYK to set your proofing to CMYK. Now go to View > Proof Colours to see Photoshop's interpretation of how the image will print. You'll generally notice that all the colours have become less saturated.

Hope this helps

rodw · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 2:33 am Post subject: colour problems

Thanks Matt, followed your directions but no different, my art work is out of magazines or from some pictures I might down load from the net, so this may be some of the problem as I don't know what their composition is.
so it looks like I will have to continue darkening the picture in photoshop till I get the print colour we need

Thanks for your thoughts
Rod w

kev · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 7:36 am Post subject:

Hi rodw, I've also been having similar troubles with my own images created in Photoshop7 . I found this http://www.swpp.co.uk/professional_imagemaker/colour1/index.htm

It didn't help cure my problem, but it makes good reading anyway.

Hope this helps.

Kev.

rodw · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject: colour problems

Thank you for your advice but that article was way over my head, but I have found the answer and I hope that this may help any other people that are having the same problem.
I found a Photoshop guide at our news agent called " Adobe Photoshop Managing colour put out by Focus guide
On page 92 chapter 8 the heading optimising your colours for printing It talks about profiles and setting, once I did this everything came out the way it was susposed to It would seem that one must set up Profiles for the Screen, scanner and printer, miss one and you are in all sorts of problems.
I would recommend this book, In australia it cost $14.95 and come with a disc that gives you tutorials as well.
I hope that this is of some help to any others that might have a similar problem.
Rod W

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