Have you ever looked at a picture of the sky on your computer screen, which is light passing through your monitor in RGB color mode, and admired how blue it can look? Then, you print that same image and wonder how or why it printed so purple? It’s because the 4 main ink colors used to make all colors in the printing process are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - or CMYK. This is a completely different color mode than RGB. RGB is the “true” spectrum of color, and contains all ranges of possible color through light. By contrast, the strongest dominations of inks that can be mixed and applied to a physical surface such as paper or plastic, exist in the 4 main colors of the CMYK color mode. This mode is greatly limited in color options by comparison to the RGB color mode, however it is the standard for mixing all of the colors needed for photo printing in the printing process. So, going back to the blue sky, if you convert the image to CMYK, and look at the color values and see that you have a high concentration of Magenta, then you’ll understand why it printed so purple. Magenta is a dominant color, and on the monitor/screen may look blue-ish, but when printed… well you know the rest. So here’s the printing tip of the day: Understand that blue is one of the most difficult colors to acheive well in the printing process - So if you want something to print blue that’s in CMYK color mode, make sure to have a very low percentage of Magenta in your color values and your chances of printing blue will be much higher! Stay tuned for more tips…