Ink Colors and Printing—common Q & A

At D Media, we provide both print and online marketing tactics. With the use of electronic forms of proofing methods, the two mediums (print vs. online) often overlap. This brings clients to a variety of valid questions about color and printing.

Q: Why do colors in printed pieces look different from colors on my screen or in my PDF proofs?
A: Monitors and printers—both offset commercial printing presses and your desktop laser or inkjet printer—produce colors in different ways.

Monitors use RGB (Red, Green, Blue) which typically supports a wider range of colors. Printers use CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) which can reproduce most—but not all—colors in the RGB color model. Depending on the equipment, CMYK generally matches 85-90% of colors in the RGB model.

When a monitor displays colors using RGB that are not in the spectrum of CMYK colors, the software program selects the closest color that will match. Applications such as Adobe Photoshop allow you to choose the color to replace. Others may not.

When viewing your proof on a computer monitor, tablet or smart phone screen, keep in mind the colors will tend to look lighter and/or brighter than in printed pieces. This is due to the light emitting from your screen. Printed material displays on flat pieces of paper with no light source behind it. However, your paper stock selection can affect the color hue or brightness of the ink colors on your printed piece.

Q: What is a Pantone color?
A: The Pantone Matching System (PMS)—or Pantone color—is an ink color standard in which colors across the CMYK spectrum are identified by an independent and unique number. Using Pantone colors, we can match colors in your printed pieces more accurately and maintain color consistency throughout the offset printing process for spot color print runs, i.e. printed pieces that use only 1, 2, 3 or even 4 spot colors and have no color photos. In a CMYK print run—printed pieces with color photos and/or more than 4 ink colors—Pantone colors will convert to the closest CMYK equivalent.

Q: Is white a printed color?
A: Because white is typically the paper color, it is considered the absence of any ink. So no, it is not an ink color. However, when printing onto colored paper, we may use white ink if any text or graphic requires it.

Q: What proofing method is recommended for printed pieces—in terms of both cost-efficiency as well as color accuracy?
A: At D Media, we typically email color Adobe Acrobat PDF files of your projects for on-screen review. Adobe Acrobat PDF files are not 100% accurate for color in printed pieces. However, this is our most economical and efficient proofing method. If your project requires color matching accuracy, we recommend you request a hard-copy high-resolution color prepress proof after final PDF approval and prior to printing. Otherwise, colors will print to the closest CMYK equivalent for four-color process pieces and closet Pantone equivalent for spot-color pieces.

Thank you to our wonderful clients for bringing pertinent questions to the blog. We hope this helps others during the printing process!