A random color question

N

Nettio

New member
1f0488450f372d96835d1b8f18876b40.jpg


Is the green in this kit supposed to be a bright lime green? Or a weird hideous yellowy-mustard color? :D I had a batch of layouts printed and this is the first time I've run into color issues so I'm trying to figure out if it's a problem on my end or theirs. Most of the colors look fine but any pages that had parts that were supposed to be any kind of bright lime green came out like this weird shade of yellow brown green.

I know screens and calibration can play into this but I looked on both my Mac and my DH's PC and the colors look the same - and nothing like the print. I already complained about something else with this order so I just want to get some other opinions before I ask about it. :D
 
Most likely it's a gamut issue. Certain colors (like greens) are hard to keep in gamut. That basically means that it shows up nice and bright on your screen but then when it's printed, it looks yellowy and off. To test this, before you print, if you use PS, you can press CTRL + SHIFT + Y anything that is out of gamut will turn grey. You can usually lighten or desat that item until it gets back in gamut.

I'm sorta a gamut nazi. LOL!
 
Ok Libby the wonder brain...LOL
I did the CTRL SHIFT Y thing, and now it wont let me desat or lighten or anything. And how do I get it out of the gamut grey mode?
 
LOL Press CTRL SHIFT Y again and it goes away. :)

Are you working in layers still? If so, you can just highlight that layer in your pallet and press CTRL U to bring up the hue/sat box. Otherwise, I'd use the sponge tool and just lightly brush over the out of gamut areas if your page is already flattened. :)
 
OMG that is SO COOL! You're awesome. I'll be doing that to all my pages now and bookmarking this for future ref.

Thanks girl!
 
lauren grier said:
lmao well it is DEF not a hideous mustard yellow colour hahahahahah
Click to expand...

LOL, seriously, it looks really bad! My first thought when I saw the printed page was "there is NO WAY that this kit was designed with that color." :D

Hmm, that actually makes sense Libby, because some of the greens look perfectly fine. It's mostly the ones that are supposed be a bright lime green, which unfortunately is a favorite color of mine so I have quite a few pages that would need fixing. Is this then an issue with the colors in the kit itself? Or a problem with their printer? It's happening with layouts from quite a few different kits, some SSD, some not.
 
Glad I could help, Mandy!

Lynnette, yes, unfortunately it's a problem with the green in the item that you're using... not the printer or your monitor or anything. It's not just greens... reds and orange and really bright blues are also hard to keep in gamut. Basically anything that's really super bright and overly saturated (which are the colors that we all love! LOL!). You sorta get to where you can look at something and know if it's gonna be in gamut without doing the test, so if I am scrapping and notice something that is obviously out of gamut, I just fix it (desat slightly-- maybe 4-5 points and lighten just a smidge) before I use it on my layout.
 
If you create your layouts in RGB, but your printer uses CMYK, it "converts" them with an algorithm that tries to get it as close as possible but fails miserably in many cases.
 
^^ this. .. I was going to say. as I've printed out things on my printer that had colours that are "out of gamut" and they were just fine.
 
This is all very interesting to me. I had a photobook printed at Shutterfly and most of the pages came back beautiful. The colors were a little dull but I figured that was a discrepency between their printer and my monitor but this one page with a really bright blue back ground came back horrible. The color was nothing like the layout. The color was really bright and saturated and so were the pictures of my son on the layout. Printed the blue was much darker and the wrong shade and my son was pinky/orange looking.
I'll definitely check this stuff before I print professionally.
Funny thing, but I also printed that page on my home printer and it came out perfect.
 
Now i know why the pages I printed for my sisters thank you cards turned out so awful! They were supposed to be a beautiful green & orange, and they turned out mustardy and yucky!

I use PSE 6, and I tried the CTRL+SHIFT+Y for the gamut thing, and nothing happened. My layers are merged, I can't find my layer file for them (of course, grrr)... do you think it doesn't work because its flat or it just doesn't do it in PSE6?
 
It's probably a different shortcut in PSE. You might try going up under "View" in the menu and look for "gamut warning." I'm almost positive that it works in PSE, but I'm not familiar with those keyboard shortcuts. :)
 
Ok so I did some testing of the gamut and here's what's weird:

1. I've never had this problem with any other pages I've printed previously, including ones that come up as being out of gamut.

2. On this page, the two boxes that the colors changed the most in, don't even come up as being out of gamut. The bottom left box looks way more yellow, almost a gold, while the top middle box is the weird green-yellow-brown mix again.
DYL_preassignment.jpg
 
On my screen...those boxes look very close to those colors that you describe...not in an ugly way, but the bottom box is definitely a golden color and the top middle box definitely shows some brown undertones.

Some print problems are also caused by the printer being low on a particular ink/toner or dirty printheads. Not enough cyan can yellow stuff out.

Nettio said:
Ok so I did some testing of the gamut and here's what's weird:

1. I've never had this problem with any other pages I've printed previously, including ones that come up as being out of gamut.

2. On this page, the two boxes that the colors changed the most in, don't even come up as being out of gamut. The bottom left box looks way more yellow, almost a gold, while the top middle box is the weird green-yellow-brown mix again.
DYL_preassignment.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Nettio said:
Ok so I did some testing of the gamut and here's what's weird:

1. I've never had this problem with any other pages I've printed previously, including ones that come up as being out of gamut.

2. On this page, the two boxes that the colors changed the most in, don't even come up as being out of gamut. The bottom left box looks way more yellow, almost a gold, while the top middle box is the weird green-yellow-brown mix again.
DYL_preassignment.jpg
Click to expand...
You did Cathy's class?? I was in it too. I still have TONS of pages to finish!!!
 
haha, me too! That was the only page I finished...or started actually! :D Once the class started, the amount of work each week was totally overwhelming. I did go back in January before the classroom closed and watched all the slideshows and everything so I did learn quite a bit though. I figure maybe I'll get around to the pages one day. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Community platform by XenForo® © 2010-2026 XenForo Ltd.
Back
Top