Colour printing is essential for making a powerful impact. Whether you’re preparing an important presentation for clients, colleagues, students or otherwise, vivid and colourful printed materials can help you in your endeavours.
While colour printing isn’t exactly a novelty, there are still a few challenges that could be preventing you from making the kind of impact you expect. Here are a few tips to get the most out of colour printing:
One of the biggest and most deceiving issues that many of us may fall for is assuming that what we see on our computer screen will directly translate to printed materials.
Most screens today, such as LCD or OLED (common for smartphones) use an RGB model, with each pixel using a blend of red, green, or blue to recreate a massive amount of colours. For websites, it used to be capped at around 216 colours back in the dinosaur days of the internet; now, it’s nearly 17 million colours. RGB is ideal for digital work, but it doesn’t always translate well to printed work.
Printers typically operate on a different colour model, CMYK. Combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow, and key/black are adjusted to recreate up to around 16,000 colours. That’s a lot less than what we can see on our screen, so naturally, many colours will not be recreated one for one when going from RGB to CMYK.
When you need to get your colours as perfect a match as possible, it’s best to consider designing in CMYK colours rather than RGB. When doing so, you’re ensuring that the printed product will look exactly as it was on the screen.
Going back to the digital drawing board, your choice of file format for saving the image(s) you intend to print can make all the difference.
Most people today know and understand the benefits of PDF file formats. They’re convenient to share, and most devices can open them with ease (and quickly). They’re great for mixed content, i.e. text and images/graphics, as well as multi-page content.
If you only need a graphic or image printed, however, you may wish to consider other options. For ultra-high resolution imagery that preserves every pixel, TIFF file formats are ideal. They’re often large files, but they can preserve your image as closely as possible, which is convenient for large-format prints.
Two more common file types for images that are a little more user-friendly are JPEG and PNG. JPEGs are ideal for common everyday images and graphics. They use a lossy compression, so images will lose some of their crispness and detail. Use them for smaller images or those that don’t need to be picture-perfect.
PNG, on the other hand, does a better job of compressing files without too much loss. PNG tends to offer better choice of vivid colours, as well as being a little better at preserving detail and crispness. For logos or graphics with lots of vector shapes like circles or ovals, PNG makes them look a lot more crisp.
Perhaps the most important tip for getting high-quality colour printing in Melbourne is to work with an established print shop such as Print on Demand. Our qualified professionals can help you visualise your printed materials, assist with choosing the best card stock and file type for your design, and bring it to life in full colour.
Print in colour and much more at Print on Demand.
