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CMYK or RGB
Your computer, scanner, digital camera and monitor create images using combinations of just three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB).
Printing presses use four different colours to print these images – Cyan (light blue), Magenta (pinky red), Yellow and Black (or CMYK – also known as Process Colour). At some stage of production, RGB images and colours must be converted to CMYK.
Conversions on images from RGB to CMYK are best done using software such as Photoshop and you should do this before sending your file to us. If you don’t perform the conversion yourself, our process will apply an industry standard profile RGB to CMYK conversion meaning that colours may not print as expected. Traditional printers often use Pantone® Spot colours when printing work. Spot colours are mixed like paint and printed one at a time.
As we use Process CMYK Colour, all Pantone® Spot colours must be changed to ‘process colour’ and converted to their CMYK equivalent, before your file is sent to us. Specifying conversion to process colours at the print stage will not meet with our requirements. (Use spot colours only when designing envelopes or invoice books. Ask us for details).
If you don’t convert spot colours to process, then an extra separation printing plate may be produced when we process your job. This means objects may not appear on your printed job and may result in you incurring unnecessary costs and time delays.
By printing ‘separations’ on your desktop printer – see the Help file that came with your application for more details. If anything other than cyan, magenta, yellow and black separations print, then you have unwanted colours that you need to convert. This is also a good way of checking knock-out / overprinting settings.
Or create a PDF file and use Adobe Acrobat Professional’s Output Preview tool to check the separations.
Or create a PDF file as a Separated PDF Some RGB and Spot colours do not have a direct CMYK equivalent – the technical term for this is “ out of gamut”. If you have chosen a colour that is out of gamut, your software will choose the closest equivalent CMYK colour, which may be different from the colour you intended. This is something that everyone has to put up with, so for best results, we strongly recommend that you choose colours from our colour charts. These have been produced on our presses and will give a more predictable indication of the colour. You can check that your document is in CMYK process colour in one of three ways:
1 By printing ‘separations’ on your desktop printer – see the Help file that came with your application for more details. If anything other than cyan, magenta, yellow and black separations print, then you have unwanted colours that you need to convert. This is also a good way of checking knock-out / overprinting settings.
2 Or create a PDF file and use Adobe Acrobat Professional’s Output Preview
tool to check the separations.
3 Or create a PDF file as a Separated PDF
Some RGB and Spot colours do not have a direct CMYK equivalent – the technical term for this is “ out of amut”. If you have chosen a colour that is out of gamut, your software will choose the closest equivalent CMYK colour, which may be different from the colour you intended. This is something that everyone has to put up with, so for best results, we strongly recommend that you choose colours from our colour charts. These have been roduced on our presses and will give a more predictable indication of the colour.
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If you have any questions about JH Print or would like to know more about what we do, request a call back now. Simply fill in the form below with your details and we'll call you back as soon as possible.
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