Why are Printed Colours Different to Screen Colours?

There is a difference in the way that colours look on the screen and when they’re printed, because the colours are produced in fundamentally different ways - screens emit coloured light whilst printers use coloured ink to replicate colours.

How Screens Create Colour

Computer screens emit light using RGB colour. This is coloured light, so when you add them together they get brighter.

Think of the screen as starting out black, then the computer starts shining the three different colours of light through the screen. Every time you add colour it gets brighter, until you combine all three, red, green and blue, to make white.

RGB screens are capable of producing over 16 million colours!

How Printers Create Colour

Printers place ink on paper using CMYK colour - cyan, magenta, yellow and key (also known as black).

What we see is light being reflected off ink on the paper, card, or other materials. When colours are combined, they get darker.

The colour spectrum of CMYK is smaller than that of RGB, only a few thousand colours, so there will always be RGB colours that don’t have a close match in CMYK.

Screen Colours vs Printed Colours

The difference in what we perceive when we look at colours on a screen vs printed colours is genuinely a difference in what we’re looking at.

Take a look at the graphic below, which represents the same colour as you will see it on your screen (RGB) and how it will look printed (CMYK). As we mentioned before, CMYK is simply not capable of producing all the RGB colours, so for particular colour, there’s quite a discrepancy.

If you’ve chosen a colour on your RGB screen that CYMK can’t reproduce, it will come out darker in print than the colour on your screen.

You can minimise the discrepancy between screen and printed colours by choosing CMYK colours in your design program, but be aware that they are still likely to look slightly different as there are various technological (eg different screens) and environmental factors (eg ambient lighting, paper colour) that will affect the way your brain perceives the colours.

Other Factors That Affect How Colours Look

Not all displays are the same, so you’ll see differences in colours from screen to screen. The reality is that we cannot trust the colours we see on the screen, and until you have tested the colours in print, you can’t be sure how it will come out.

The environment around your screen also affects the way your brain perceives colour - how much ambient light there is, whether there is glare on the screen, and even whether you’re looking at your screen head on or from an angle.

The colour or hue of your paper or cardstock will also affect the way printed colours look.

Do You Need to Match Digital and Print Colours?

The importance of colour to your business depends on your industry and the requirements of your current print job.

Remember, your customer is unlikely to compare your colours on screen and in print side by side, so they generally won’t notice subtle differences. Particularly when you’re designing printed materials, the customer will never see the design files, so stick to choosing colours that look good printed to be sure you’ll get a good result.

Being aware of the limitations of printed colours, many companies settle on the compromise of having slightly different colours in print than on screens.

How to Manage Colours For Your Printed Materials

• Reorganise your workspace - ensure you have adequate lighting but avoid glare on the monitor, and ensure you are looking at your screen straight on rather than from an angle
• Make sure you have a good quality monitor
• Plan ahead and allow extra time to choose the right colours and make amendments later if required
• Choose a CMYK colour space in your design program rather than RGB
• Bear in mind what colour paper you are printing on and how that will affect your printed colours
• Specify your colours in Pantone colours, CMYK percentages or provide us with printed colour samples to help us understand exactly what colour your are trying to achieve so that we can get the closest match possible
• For colour critical print jobs, request colour proofs so that you can check the printed colours before commencing the full print run.

Don’t forget, we have an in house graphic designer who can help you get great colours for your print job using our colour emulation software.

If you still have concerns over the appearance of your printed colours, give us a call and we’ll give you a few tips to get a better result.