and another query - colour this time

[mops]

ok - i know - i'm coming across as quite dim with all these questions .................. possibly true though :rolleyes:

ok - i can never get my colours in photoshop to be as bright as i'd like them (pretty much like myself really ;o) - i'm trying to get a very bright, kind of luminous green, orange and pink - but no matter when i go into 'custom colours', whatever book i use never comes up with the colour - i.e. take a look at this website (if you can) - see how bright it is - i'd like to match this colour for an ad i'm doing but i just cant get it (the ad will be printed comercially) - thanks again guys - mops


http://www.comfykid.com/index.html

[The Repro Kid]

It helps to pick "web safe" colors (A). These won't dither on any persons screen. But it also helps to pick "pure" colors if you can't always use web safe colors (like in your example).

When in web safe mode, locate the general color from the spectrum slider (B) and choose from area (C).

Pure colors, whether you are in web safe mode or not, are in the upper right hand corner of the picker (C). Choosing from this area will always give you the brightest possible color.

Stay away from custom colors, these are for print. What you want is to use the color picker and pick RBG or web safe colors. Web safe colors are entered in hex format found underneath where the RGB colors are entered.

Oh, yeah...
if you're on a mac you can open up the "DigitalColor Meter" and sample the RGB values from other web sites. It's in Applications-Utilities-DigitalColor Meter.

[DCurry]

Since you're talking about printing the ad, you're talking about CMYK. CMYK has a significantly smaller gamut than RGB - really bright and intense colors aren't always possible, unless it is printed with spot colors (probably not a possibility with a magazine ad.) You might come close to the green, but the orange will dull a bit.

Your best bet is to get the printer's CMYK profile, if you can. Then, you can take your RGB images and do a profile-to-profile conversion to the printer's supplied profile. This will get you as close as you are gonna get with that particular printshop.

[The Repro Kid]

Huh? you're printing? like a web page? I must have wax in my ear, mops, well then if custom colors would be your best bet... wait a minute, too many apples and oranges starting too happen...

If your picking custom color and trying for a cmyk match, then again, purifying your colors will help. The custom color cmyk matches often bite, so you need to improvise a little and take out the impurities, remove the trace extras that muddy the color. remove excess black, etc, remove opposites such as any cyan that sneaks onto the orange, magenta that sneaks into the greens etc.

Color matching is not a straightforward thing to explain. You don't see many people turn to the Pantone Process guide very often. You see them pick up the custom color book and the custom to CMYK conversion book but you never see them look at the process book. But what they should be looking at is the process book. This is the one that shows viable CMYK recipes. Using the Custom to CMYK conversion book actually forces you pick funny colors because custom colors are colors that can not easily be printed with CMYK. If they can't be printed in cmyk then naturally their CMYK conversions don't look very attractive. There are plenty of nice bright colors that print very nice in CMYK but you won't find them in the custom to CMYK conversion book.

If you study the process book you will notice that the purer, brighter looking colors are made up of two, or at the most three of the CMYK inks. Mostly, whenever you have 4 of the CMYK inks in one color you will not have a bright color but an earth-tone, a neutral, a pastel, etc, but not something bright.

If you look again at the color picker in CMYK you will note the pure bright colors are still in upper right hand corner, like the screenshot I showed earlier.

Hope this helps, I had no idea you were actually printing, its a good thing someone was awake!

[mops]

thanks guys - brilliant - i'll give that a go now, i understand what youre saying

the printer did actually set up their profile on my pc - and stupid me went and upgraded to acrobat 7 - and the installation appears to have over-written their profile - the documents are going to print tomorrow and i'm worried about how its going to look when printed - i think it's best i speak with them first before i ftp the file over

i'll try doing what you both have suggested with the colours now - thanks guys for your help once again - mops

[Paul C]

Off topic - but I would like to say hello to The ReproKid and DCurry and AdobeAce…
Remember me?
peace

[The Repro Kid]

Paul C and/or Palsey.

What took you so long?

[Paul C]

Actually, it was palsy. Anyway, I checked here once in a while to see what was happening and much to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that the old crowd was gathering once again! I'm up for it…
peace

[DCurry]

Off topic - but I would like to say hello to The ReproKid and DCurry and AdobeAce…
Remember me?
peace
I remember ya! Welcome back.