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Photography Question 
- Susan Jane Allen

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Problem with Photoshop Colors


 
 
Hi, Turning to my BP friends for help with a Photoshop question, though it's not really a photo...forgive me, I'm desperate...

I use Photoshop for my photo editing, but have little experience using it for anything else, but needed to make a card and the printer here (in China) keeps telling me that the color of the background is wrong--he can't print it. (http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/dynoGallDetail.php?photoID=13806117)

He said it's florescent--but it doesn't look florescent to me--I've changed it a couple of times, but he keeps coming back to tell me he can't print the color of the background. In this last version, I chose a color from the swatches: Pantone Blue 072C. I suspect we might be having a language problem as my Mandarin is terribly limited in technical stuff. But would anyone have any idea what the problem could be? I filled the background with blue and then had a new layer for each text line. He wanted a psd image, so I assume he knows how to work with it, and if he wanted it flattened, he could do that, so haven't flattened it before sending it to him. Apparently the only problem is the blue background. I would deeply appreciate any help anyone can give me. I've pasted in the link, and will upload the photo again with this message, but I don't want the photo to appear in my gallery, so if it does, I'll delete that and you can just use the link I put above. Deep thanks to anyone who can help!


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April 15, 2013

 

Connie J. Bagot
  When I click on your color background with the eyedropper and then look at the color pop up menu there is an exclamation point on the blue color---telling me that this color is "out of gamut". Out of gamut colors could be difficult to reproduce. Another thing that could possibly be a problem is if you are working with different color spaces. If he is printing with cmyk and you are looking at rgb, then you would need to change your color space for this pic to see what he is seeing. Just thoughts---I'm not especially experienced when it comes to printing.


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April 15, 2013

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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  If you look at the definition of fluorescent, you might get a better understanding of what the problem is. Also, printing is subtractive color, and your monitor is additive color. So the blue you see on the monitor isn't going to look the same if it gets printed.
And he might want a psd file so that he can change the blue to something that can be printed.
When printing, you lay down inks or colors so that some colors get absorbed. So tiny droplets of magenta next to tiny droplets of yellow comes out looking red(I think that's the right combo). With a monitor, (and when you were a kid you may have looked at a tv screen with a magnifying glass and saw the little red, green, and blue lights), you have the light being emitted from the screen. So you can get richer colors.


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April 15, 2013

 
- Susan Jane Allen

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  Hi, Thanks so much for your kind help! Not sure why he wanted a pds file, perhaps I had misunderstood that. I got more clarification today--seems that though he can print psd files, he only knows Corel Draw and doesn't know how to change a psd file. As to the out of gamut issue, I have used colors which both show and don't show the little exclamation mark, but to no avail. He says the blue will look purple and just wants me to make it in Corel Draw, which I don't have and certainly don't want to learn just to make this card. Sigh... Such a simple thing is getting to be insanely complicated. Maybe I'll just go to his shop and make it there.. Or find a more professional guy who knows how to use Photoshop. How can a printer not know how to use Photoshop...?


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April 17, 2013

 
- Susan Jane Allen

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  Problem finally resolved, thanks for all your comments. I went back into Photoshop, got into the background layer and explored colors--clicking everywhere to find an acceptable color which didn't bring up an exclamation mark. And then I flattened the image--don't know if that helped...! Astounding how few colors there were to choose from, and out of those, they most either looked terribly washed out, or too dark, hardly blue at all. I still don't get it--I see lots of gorgeous colors being printed all the time, so why were so few colors available to me? Next time I do this, I'll have to figure it all out.


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April 17, 2013

 
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