Why a print looks different from the screen

Flip the colour setting below to see the direction of the change. It is a simulation of a generic conversion, not your printer's profile, but the colours that lose the most are the same ones that lose on any press.

Reason 1: ink cannot make light#

A screen mixes red, green and blue light and can produce a range of colours (a gamut) that is wider than what cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink can reflect off paper. The overlap is most of the palette; the difference is the brightest, most saturated colours. When the file is converted, those get pulled to the nearest printable colour, which is duller. Nothing in the file is wrong; the press cannot do it.

• Avoid making a bright, saturated colour the foundation of a print design. Use it small, as an accent, where a shift will not be noticed.
• Expect blue-violets, bright greens, oranges and hot pinks to shift most. Reds, yellows, browns and neutrals shift least.
• Black text should be black ink only. A generic conversion can turn pure RGB black into a mix of all four inks, which looks fuzzy on small type. Ask the printer to keep text as 100 per cent black.
• Large black areas print better as a rich black (black plus some cyan and magenta). Ask; do not guess.

Reason 2: paper absorbs#

On coated paper (gloss, silk, matt) the ink sits on the surface and stays crisp and saturated. On uncoated paper it soaks in: dots spread, dark areas fill in, everything is softer and darker with a warmer feel. Both are fine; they are different products. For uncoated stock, lift the shadows a little (a gentle Curves adjustment) and avoid fine light type on dark backgrounds. If the printer offers a paper sample, hold it next to your screen.

Reason 3: the monitor is too bright#

A typical monitor at default brightness is two to three times brighter than a sheet of paper under office light. Everything on it looks luminous, so the print looks dark and flat by comparison even when the colours are right. You cannot fix that in the file; you can stop being surprised by it. Turn the monitor down when you judge a print job, look at it in the light the print will be seen in, and trust the proof over the screen.

Reason 4: the preview was scaled#

Print preview shows the whole page, so it is drawn at a third or a quarter of its size. Fine detail, hairlines, small type and soft photos look better shrunk than they are. Zoom to 100 per cent (Ctrl+1 in the Editor; Cmd+1 on a Mac) and look at the smallest text and the busiest photo before you export. What you see at 100 per cent is close to what 300 dpi ink will show. If something moved between the preview and the print, the page size was wrong and the printer scaled the file; What a print-ready PDF is covers that check.

What to do before the first run#

• The design does not depend on a neon or a bright blue-violet for its main surfaces.
• Black text is pure black; large black areas discussed with the printer.
• Shadows lifted a little if the stock is uncoated.
• Checked at 100 per cent, not in the scaled preview.
• Paper chosen with a sample in hand, or the printer's recommendation.
• A proof requested: a PDF proof for layout, a printed proof on the real stock for anything colour-critical.

How Voidcanvas handles this#

Voidcanvas exports RGB only. Studio's print PDFs say so in the slug line under the artwork; the Editor's PDF does not, so write it in your note to the printer. The printer then converts with the profile for their press and paper, which gives a better result than a generic conversion in the design tool. There is no CMYK export and no soft-proofing. What you do have: Curves and Levels as adjustment layers to lift shadows for uncoated stock without touching the photo, Ctrl+1 for the 100 per cent check, and print presets at 300 dpi so the page size is right. The brand guideline builder keeps colours in OKLCH ramps, which makes it easy to pick a printable step of a bright brand colour instead of the neon itself.

Open the Editor