RGB Printing??

[DLW1706]

Hello,

I am designing a business card that has lime green as a main color, and I am finding it impossible to find a commercial printer that will print in RGB! I completely understand the difference between the 2 color pallets I just don't understand why I can not find one printer that will print RGB! So does that mean any business card I ever do can never have bright colors?? Cause that just seems a little silly, I must be doing something wrong here???

Can anyone help please!

Thanks!!

[Mylenium]

I completely understand the difference between the 2 color pallets

Apparently not. No print process on this planet is based on RGB. No matter what you think, they are all based on popping ink on a substrate as a multiplicative/ subtractive process. It's always translated one way or another, either explicitly with color modes and color proviles or automatically by whatever printer driver. You're looking for something that doesn't exist. However, most printers will happily print RGB-based files, if they are color managed and have a suitable profile assigned that allows them to properly translate colors to what their devices support...

Mylenium

[DLW1706]

Thank you,

I did ask my printer about lime green and all they said was that if i sent

an rgb file it will be converted to cmyk, now every time i do that (through

photoshop) obviously it is making it a dull green, no where even close to

lime green. He did tell me if i paid and extra 50 buck they could stop all

mass printing to get a color close to what i was looking for. Does that

sound right? idk just seems a little pricey to get lime green especially

when the cards only cost 25. I'm getting a frustrated with this stupid

bright color thing just doesn't make sense!! is there a setting i can

change in my color profiles that will help? or something else i can do??

Thanks again for your help it is greatly appreciated!!!

[Mylenium]

You seriously need to read up on the different color models, color management and the different gamut (=ability to render colors) of those colro models. Your printer is right - your lime green is "out of gamut" when doing an automated conversion and its CMYK mixture formula needs to be adjusted. Whether he does it or you is secondary, but a good lime green in CMYK is pretty much just yellow with a hint of cyan and easily created in PS eitehr by rebuilding the document natively in CMYK in PS or cleaning up the channels and adjusting them after a conversion. Your automatic conversion simply adds a lot of black and magenta becaue - tada - you're working without color management and nothing really makes sense to the color engine. Anyway, you realyl need to read up on that stuff or you'll be forever lost.

Mylenium

[Panderson99]

Hi Mylenium, out of interest at the time of your post, the Durst Lambda was a laser based RGB printer. I believe it is no longer manufactured.

There is also the Lumejet S200, which is an ink free RGB process.

[station_two]

Mylenium is right.

You should really take advantage of Photoshop's Soft Proofing abilities to see exactly what your card will look like after printing on a CMYK printer —even on an inkjet printer which expects an RGB image file that its driver converts to its own flavor of CMYK or CcMmYK. 

By using the printer's target profile for the specific combination of ink/paper/printer you can see on your monitor what your image will look like in print.

In Photoshop: 

View menu > Proof Setup… > Custom > specific printer profile

Then you can toggle the soft proof view at will (Command (Mac)/Control (Wind.) Y) and adjust your colors accordingly with both Proof Colors and Gamut Warning checked.

Ask your commercial printer for their specific CMYK printer profile.

[DLW1706]

Thank you again,

the problem i am having is making lime green, i even tried using cmyk color

codes to get it close and it still fades to an dull green, there's got to

be something im doing wrong?

[gator soup]

>> something im doing wrong?

as others have explained, you are creating out-of-gamut colors in your RGB mode, here's the PROOF:

somewhere in the above Granger Chart is your green

here is the Photoshop "soft proof" in CMYK mode:

as you can see the CMYK space does not contain your green

the smaller CMYK print Space (paper and ink technology) simply is not physically capable of reproducing the pretty colorful saturation, gamut and dynamic range of the source or monitor RGB Spaces used in the RGB rainbow of color spectrum example

your printer probably wants to run your green as a "spot color" to make you not disappointed in your creation

professional and amateur printers alike should make themselves intimately familiar with Photoshop's Soft Proofing and Gamut Warning tools and train their eyes to work within more real-world color gamuts and dynamic ranges for print work

[Was DYP]

If you want lime green why are you not using spot colors. No offset CMYK is every going to come close to lime green no matter what you start with.

On the other hand digital presses might be able to get you close enough. What quantity are you looking for and is it practical quantity wise to run these on a digital press? Most RIP, especially the Fiery RIP found on many digital presses have the ability to print out color charts for CMYK, RGB and Spot Colors. Find someone with a digital press and have them print out a color chart for you. I do that for clients all the time from our digital press.

[cecilrothfeld]

The main problem why you can't print your lime color is due to the fact that inks  are not perfect.  In theory, you can produce any color with the correct mixing of inks, if the inks are ideal representations of three colors, separated equally on the color wheel and on its border.

In practice, this kind of inks does not exist, and thats the reason why you can't obtain  a lot of colors, lime between them.   The best you can try is look for a digital printer who uses 6 or 8 inks (a technique that helps increasing the amount and intensity of colors you can obtain in the printing process) and ask them to print for you a test of the colors they can achieve in the sorrounding of lime.  May be you can get something near to the color you are looking for.  By the way, ask them to avoid using a profile for their printer that will match the print to any standard (like Fogra or similar).  Ask them for their best color, best or bigger gamut.  

Hope this is useful for you.

[jasustar]

You said the card was predominatly lime-green. What are the other colors?

If youu have  a lime grenn backround with black text and or black halftones,  the card could then be treated as a two-color job. The printer could use a Pantone lime green and black halftones.

There are plenty of small specialty print shops that would happy to help you with such two-color job.

[maraahmed]

All printers print in CYMK, the only way to get a specific vibrant color printed is using a spot or pantone color. I don't see that as a possibility for your project, unless you have a lot of money to spare. The other thing you can do to achieve that look, is look for a printer that prints clear ink, to give you that vibrant look. That's a whole other process that the print shop will guide you through. The best thing to do is design everything in CYMK color in your program of choice so you don't get any surprises when you print your cards.

To help you understand the difference between RGB and CYMK, RGB are colors mixed using light and CYMK using ink, trying to print RGB is like you attempting to print light.

[Guest]

I had the same problem wanting a vibrant blue and getting dull gray blues using one object. Solution - Use white background canvas and draw three transparent rectangles, one with brightest yellow, one with brightest blue, and one with 30 percent gray tone in RGB. Save as PDF and print on printer with standard settings, then adjust colors and gray tone and reprint, repeat until you find the closest to the lime color that you like.   

[Craig5C35]

Wow! not only is this answer way too confusing, it's also about 5 years too late!

[Hunter35061954s6r3]

Craig5C35 is 3 years too late, and I am 4 years too late uwu

[liamb729331]

Screen Printing?

[marliton]

Most digital printers use six or more ink colors and can reproduce most RGB tones.

[Guest]

My vibrant blue is for a small bottle label glossy finish, a little larger than the size of a business card. I created my design in Inkscape (free software) SVG file which is constrained to RGB then converted it to the most vibrant blue possible in CMYK using Acrobat Pro DC (free 7-day trial). The label printer shop, labeltech.com in Muncie IN, is now converting it into Pantone which requires 3 color plates. The price is about $0.18 per label. Business card material should be less expensive and the smaller size should reduce the price. You can check with my source or find a print shop that will do business cards using pantone and use pantone for your design. I also seem to remember that businesses who make business cards offer a choice of card stock and maybe lime green is available.     

[Dynamic Office]

Booked mark this page for the sheer CMYK / RGB knowledge being dropped!

Very interesting read guys, thank you all so much

[Jez - Design matters]

This is an interesting one.. I have as a rule run all commercial print files as CMYK, but have recently printed through a large format printer (Not Lithographic)  where the are extra inks used (Green and Orange) as addition to the CMYK, Other printers may have light Cyan & Pink!  And keeping to my RGB profile have abetter brighter results.

But if your are printing lithographic then would advise you buy a colour bible that give multi colour CMYK breakdowns' and pick  near colour from this or chose a Pantone and  see a wet proof prior production.

[Bob_Hallam]

I agree with you that it's sad commercial printers these days can't print in RGB!  Oh that would be excellent wouldnt it!!!  As someone who has made his living as a Color Engineer in Commercial print, I can attest to the sad loos designers have to go through seeing their prized beautiful saturated bloes disintigrate into dull CMYK equivilants! 

The problem is that RGB colors are actually measured based on the light, dark, primaries of light in CIELab color.  So their not in a printable format yet.   Sadly printers still cannot print with light!  These neanderthals can only use pigmented grease and tree parts to get your job off press.  That's where the fun starts for them.  It's not easy to throw grease at a tree with any kind of accuracy let alone beauty.  So we have to give them some props at least! 

The problem is the pigments available on Earth today are not as bright as the light that shines on them.  So they only reflect back some of that light, and only what bounces off the tree underneath.  We can be plain and call it paper from hear on out but you get the drift.  The brighter the paper the brighter the color will look.  Cheap paper is not as bright and the colors are more muted.  It's a trade off. 

The real rub is in the conversion process, where designers have to sacrifice their childeren to the god's of CMYK just to get something halfway close to their beautiful art.  Sadly no solution for that today, unless you add more colors to that process, like high end ink jet printers do today.  So adding, Orange 021, and Pantone Green, and Reflex Blue can add brightness to your printed result at a cost of corse.  I have also made seperations with pastel colors that turned out gorgeous.  So your realy not held captve to the CMYK monster so long as you can pay the ransom for custom separations and print work to keep all the beauty in your RGB files. 

Hope that helped a bit!  So sorry for your loss!

[Dynamic Office]

Can I just say:

While this forum often gives some solid advice, this particular thread is exceptional.

I’ve learnt more about printing in this thread then my 2-week crash course some years back…

I’m forever thankful to everyone who has given their professional opinion and truly it’s changed me as a designer for the better!

Still booked marked

[roryander]

Wow! What a crazy thread this one is.

If you actually have a printing company you can physically meet.

That's your golden ticket. Let them show you examples and color books.

If they will build a spot channel in your Photoshop file for $50. Great deal.

The rest of the thread... . yes, no, kind of...There is a mega-ton of options and information.

But I I dig color engineer pastel  grease guy sympathetic to CMYK.

Might as well throw RGB in as well and we will both ride magical unicorns into a rainbow.

[InstaPick]

The color of monitor is RGB color model, but the printing is CMYK color model.

So I suggest you can transfer the file of business card to CMYK, and then adjust the color of lime green, that will be meet the color you want.