What transparency styles can I use in CMYK?

[Sian30931285vwgj]

Hi, I'm setting up my design for print and using these water droplets. It looks beautiful and realistic in RGB, but once swapped to CMYK, they become very clunky. Does anyone know a way I can fix this? I've tried playing with the transparency styles, such as overlay/multiply/colour dodge, but they aren't giving me the desired effect. See images for reference!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

How will they be printed? What kind of machine?

THe orange gets very muddy after converting, are you sure there's no cyan or black in the mix?

[Sian30931285vwgj]

oh thanks for the tip! I have removed the black & cyan, much better. I've recreated the bubbles without any colour dodge / screen transparent styles and used gradients and opacity instead. Thanks!

[Monika Gause]

Glad you could solve it!

[Ton Frederiks]

Blend modes can be very different  between RGB and CMYK.

This gives some examples:

https://pdfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PDF-Color-CheatSheet.pdf