Trouble printing text in an exact color. 1

[Lyell]

I'm having trouble printing text in the exact color I want.

I've specified my document mode as CMYK and created a new document in CMYK mode. I type the text I want, highlight it, and then change the fill and the stroke to two CMYK colors which seem on the screen to be the colors I want. I don't get a "out of gamut" warning. But when I print out the page, the color is much brighter than the one I want.

The color that I'd like the text to be is the same as an object I have on the same page; and that object prints out the color I desire.

I've been trying everything I can think of for several hours, but I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing wrong.

 

[apepp]

...this other object is what exactly, native object or imported?

Andrew

 

[apepp]

...also does the text have a surrounding color background?

...this can optically change the appearance even if it is the same color as an object on white or no background...

Andrew

 

[Lyell]

Andrew, the other object:

-- started as text created by someone else in a different color. I don't know how it was created, but I extracted it from a pdf file into Illustrator as letters each with a separate path

-- I then copied it from Illustrator, placed it as a smart object into a Photoshop document, and applied an irredescent style to it. I then used the eyedropper to select a color from it.

-- then I copied the styled text from Photoshop and pasted it back into Illustrator. Looked good.

-- then I tried to create more text using the color I'd selected, after making sure I didn't get a gamut warning. The text looks great on the screen but not when I print it.

-- both my styled object and the additional text are on a plain white background.

I hope I've remembered all the steps. I usually only work with RGB; this is my first project where I need CMYK, so there may be some basic information I lack.

 

[Lyell]

I've "sort of" solved the problem, by changing the color of the text stroke from a darker green to a slightly lighter green. Now it still looks ok on the screen, and the printed text looks much closer to what I had in mind.

I guess I thought that when I was sticking to CMYK colors, with no gamut messages from AI, that the screen and the print version would look the same. So -- I better learn some more about CMYK.

 

[apepp]

...nothing obvious from your explanation as to what might be causing the problem on output, other than the fact that your text is a vector object and your pasted image is a bitmap...

...i've come across printers that deal with these differently, even though they are the same CMYK color...

...one thing to ensure on output is that you let the application manage the color and not the printer driver, if you have both managing the color you can end up with unexpected results, so check you have color management turned off in your printer driver, selecting your printer profile to the paper you are printing to...

...so long as the colors in photoshop read the same CMYK values in Illustrator then the color is correct, and so long as the color settings are synchronized too in your color management options...

...this points to a problem with the rendering at print time, with the driver dealing with vector graphics differently to that of raster graphics when converting from CMYK to RGB in the driver...

...you can try a test print using the same RGB values in a bitmap square, and then applying those RGB numbers to a vector object, print out to see if they render to print the same...

...do check that all your color settings via the bridge application are synchronized, they need to be using the same color settings file or problems can result on artwork you move around the applications...

Andrew

 

[Lyell]

Great ideas, Andrew -- I'll go check all that out. Thanks for helping me start to understand all this.

 

[apepp]

...another point to note is that of using the eyedropper in illustrator to pick up a color from photoshop, which sounds like what you have done perhaps...

...be careful doing that as the values don't in my experience match, color seems to shift slightly along the way...

...same for photoshop eyedropper too, the color values can differ...

Andrew