Hi! I came across your 'Printing Artwork' tutorial series and wondered how I can make Photoshop images in CMYK more accurate to an original image's RGB colours (I use SAI) . And if printing CMYK images are accurate to what you see CMYK on screen. Does using CMYK safe palettes still print correctly even when you use gradients or mix them? Thanks!
The short answer is you can’t really. Long answer with some suggestions below the cut.
You can fudge your colours around using hue/saturation adjustment layers, but once you’re restricted to CMYK colours, you can’t ever hit that vibrancy that RGB offers as ink on its own just can’t produce those colours. Your monitor also may affect what colours you see as every monitor is slightly different in terms of brightness/contrast, colour temperature, gamma, etc. The best way to test what your print is going to look like is to print it yourself. (I’ve had experiences in the past where an image looks great on a monitor but is too saturated in one particular colour once printed, so after fiddling with it and test printing, I got it to print like I envisioned after I made the one on the computer look very odd colour-wise)
In regards to gradients with CMYK safe palettes, as long as you’re in CMYK mode, Photoshop will automatically limit itself to CMYK values only. SAI doesn’t have this option, so you’re basically stuck to modifying things in post in Photoshop to better fit a printer’s gamut (colour range).
If you ever want to see what falls outside of the printer’s gamut, you can pull your image into Photoshop and put your view mode into gamut warning mode.
Make sure your Proof Setup is on CMYK.
Let’s use this RGB picture as an example:
There’s tons of very saturated cyan in this. I know from experience this won’t print as I see it here, but it’s hard for someone inexperienced in print to realize this, so this is where the Gamut Warning mode comes in:
Anything that’s turned grey signifies an area that falls outside of an average printer’s gamut; it won’t print as intended.
Once you convert the image to CMYK, you’ll notice it dulls all of those areas in the grey:
You can especially notice it on the little glowy paper flying around in the background. A printer just cannot produce that colour, so Photoshop attempts to find the closes CMYK colour value to the one there and replaces it, often ending with a less-saturated image. This is what the print will look like even if you tried to print the top, more saturated image.
You can manually adjust your image in colour layers to fall into a printer’s gamut, but this process can be very time-consuming for very minor enhancements. I personally just convert straight to CMYK and let it be unless something drastic needs to change.
If you’re making an image for print, try to keep the fact that colours are limited when it comes to ink in mind as you’re making it. Super bright, neon, saturated colours tend to not print as you see on a monitor.
This is the first of a series of print tutorials to help artists set-up their artwork for print and understand the ins and outs of print. I’ve been working with print materials for over 4 years now and see many artists continue to make the same mistakes and ask the same questions, so I’m hoping this series of tutorials will be informative and help you if you’re confused with setting up your materials for print.
