cmyk colors not matching up

[aco9587]

I have looked up a cmyk color chart off the web and when i use the photoshop color picker to change the cmyk color to say: 0% 89% 32% 0% im supposed to get a darkish pink color, yet i do not, its more of a redish pink color. The color is totaly off compared to the color shown on the color chart.

Does the 'color libraries' have anything to do with this? its set to 'pantone 191 c', Pantone solid coated' right now.

Should it be set to 'Pantone Color Bridge CMYK EC/PC/UP' ? one of them 3?

What does the EC, PC, and UP mean?

I am creating cmyk docs for printing, not rbg, i cannot use rgb for what i am doing.

I would like for the colors that come out on the printed pages to be exactly the colors shown on the cmyk document i create in photoshop, or as close as can be.

I have photoshop managing the colors in both the printer settings and photoshop settings already.

 

[Steve]

EC=Uncoated
PC=Coated
EC=Euro Coated

To be able to help you a little better you need to explain why you're using CMYK instead of RGB.
Even if you're printing to a commercial printer you should creating this in RGB.
If you're printing to a inkjet printer the print driver does the conversion for you.

There are ways to "Proof" preview to whatever device or paper your printing to.

 

[aco9587]

well i always used the standard RGB setting before, except when i went to officedepot to get some business cards printed up, i came in with a RGB psd and they said it had to be in CMYK, when they converted the image there on their computer it dulled down the bright colors so badly, then the image looked horrible and i had to go back home and reproduce the same image in CMYK all over again.

officedepot told me that CMYK was better to design intense graphic images with, possibly they were wrong or just had no idea what they were talking about other than what they worked with at their job.

I started using CMYK cause of that, also if i create a image of an anima cartoon character in RGB and then using the exact same colors in CMYK re-create the same image, the CMYK image always prints out more vibrant in colors and adds more variations of different colors, unlike RBG which seems limited in the different amount of colors it will print. RGB printed less ranges of the spectrum colors than CMYK did.

i guess i could have some settings wrong, when creating the docs, they are always :

CMYK - 300dpi or RGB - 300dpi

i always left the 'color mode' to 8bit dunno if that setting should be higher for better quality pic/printing?

the printer im using is a HP photosmart c410a with 5 ink cartridges 2 blacks and 3 color

 

[aco9587]

if i create 2 PS docs, both with the color #FC00FF one in RGB 300dpi the other in CMYK 300dpi the colors do not match, not even close.

the color is supposed to be a bright pink, it is in the RGB doc, lookslight purple in the CMYK doc.

when i print both, the RGB one prints out more of a very DARK reddish pink, not bright at all, and tht CMYK prints out kinda dark purple.

so is it coming down to you cant get true colors printed out unless you have a million dollor printer with 20 different color cartridges or more?

or am i doing something wrong?

 

[Steve]

You're talking about 2 different things here, printing to your personal printer and sending work to a commercial printer.
In either case you need to be working in RGB
When sending the work to your personal printer you do not convert to RGB.

From Adobe:
"If your image is in RGB mode, do not convert the document to CMYK mode when printing to a desktop printer. Work entirely in RGB mode. As a rule, desktop printers are configured to accept RGB data and use internal software to convert to CMYK. If you send CMYK data, most desktop printers apply a conversion anyway, with unpredictable results."
Adobe Photoshop CS5 * About desktop printing

You can use View|Proof Setup Custom to see how an image will look.
When printing at home under Device to Simulate enter the exact paper you're going to use, and toggle with Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y on the Mac.

You can make contrast, color, saturation adjustments, etc., to get the image to look the way you want it to look.
When sending the work to a commercial printer it needs to be CMYK.

Do the same thing with View|Proof Setup Custom except choose Working CMYK which should be US Web Coated (Swop) v2.
You can make adjustment to get the colors the way you want them and save to CMYK.

Try that with your RGB document with color #FC00F.
Toggle Working CMYK on and off with Ctrl+Y.

The reason that your cards came out the way they did is because Office Depot did the conversion with no adjustments or corrections.

I'm not the best guy to explain CMYK and commercial printing but I think this should help you get closer the the results you want.

 

[aco9587]

this is a doc with everything in RGB mode.

here are my settings when creating a doc, i only have CS3.
width: 3
Height:3
resolution:72
color mode:RGB Color 8bit
Background Contents:White
Color Profie: sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels
I set the color to #FC00FF

and use the brush tool to make a big pink dot on the doc.

i click on print, photoshop settings are:

Document (Profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
Color Handling: Photoshop Manages Colors
Printer Profile: Working RGB - sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Rendering Intent: Relative Colorimetric
Center Image - is checked
Match print colors- is checked
Black Point Compensation - is checked

My Printer settings are:

Paper Type: Plain paper
print quality: best
color management: application managed colors

"the pic does not print as pink, more like a dark red, maroon color."
every time i print a page i do get this message saying: Some PostScrips specific print settings (interpolation, Calibration, Encoding) will be ignored since you are printing to a non-PostScript printer.
no idea what that means.

if i call HP i already know they will not support this issue and say nothing wrong with printer,the problem is with the program your using.

even in windows Paint pgm, using the same color, it still prints out a dark red color and not pink.....

 

[Steve]

Printer profile needs to be the paper you're using, HP semigloss, HP Photo Rag, etc.
I don't think there's a setting for plain paper.

Open Printer Settings and make sure ALL printer color management settings, effects, enhancement, etc., are disabled.

Re-read the message I wrote especially about:
"View|Proof Setup Custom to see how an image will look.
When printing at home under Device to Simulate enter the exact paper you're going to use, and toggle with Ctrl+Y, Cmd+Y on the Mac."