hi
i’m trying to print a series of posters in some medium size where the colour red is the main colour, and i’ve gone to this printer and they’ve told me i need to convert the colour scheme of my pictures to the CMYK scheme and then send them the files. i’ve done this in photoshop but when i do so, the red colour turns into an ugly pinkish tone. i don’t want my final posters to look like this, i want them to look at least close to what i designed, red is the central point of this posters so if this colours is not really printed as intended, then there is no point in printing them at all, this colour coming out right is essential. so i was wondering how do people print professioanlly their flyers and pictures where you can clearly see how the red is very very red-looking, is it the type of printing that affects the color scheme that should be used? i didnt as ask what printing method they use, but should i ask for a different one if i want this colour to come out right? if so, which method?
my pictures are mainly photographs ive taken where the colours black, red and white are all of the colours that you can see, red being the most important one, and you can see gradients of red darkening until it’s black and you can also see reds lightening until theyre white.
now, i know about the size and dpi and all that, there is no problem about that, unless it affects the printing method.
there is also this one single poster i want to print out, where the background is pure black, then there is only text in pure red, what printing method should i use here? since it doesnt seem as complex as the other posters. i ask this cos when i went to the printing shop i also came across a place where this guy was printing layers of colours over eachother, so i thought this could be the right method for this kind of pictures.
thanks in advance! (:
Printer Media, Computers & Internet
July 4th, 2011 on 5:25 am
For offset printing in particular, CMYK is the only way your image can be reproduced but the CMYK colour range cannot match all of the RGB range which is why you are experiencing colour shifts. This incidentally is also why the printer has advised you to do the work so that you can fix anything you’re not happy with.
After converting to CMYK, select the the colour areas you want to have in red and fill them with a mix of 100%M, 100%Y. If this is too much of an orange red for your liking, add in about 10%C as well. Without having seen your design you may need to select areas using tools such as Magic Wand or if you’ve got a layered image/text you may be able to use other selection methods.
Photos you will need to adjust using the Image>Adjustments settings until you are happy with the colours.
For the plain black and red poster you’d be better to use Illustrator and use Pantone spot colours, this way you can print in two colours only, red and black instead of four colour process (CMYK) which will be a cheaper to produce option. If you really want to use Photoshop, make sure it’s in CMYK colour mode and create a red colour as above.