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Thread: Color difference problem

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2020
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    Unhappy Color difference problem

    This may be an odd question. I'm having a few problems with colors. I like the setting my monitor is on and I know that's not the problem. Click image for larger version. 

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    Attached is a photo of what I'm dealing with. The photo to the right is artrage, while the photo to the left is how I actually see the photo anywhere else (ex. word or photo viewer) and the photo on the bottom is how the printed version looks.
    I'm a newbie at this, so if anyone knows what is going on or what I'm doing wrong please tell me.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2019
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    176
    Hi Sandra35!

    I think, there are at least two basic things you have to know about colours in digital painting. The first is, that what you see on the screen are colours of light. Because the monitor is a light source. So the mixing of the colours follows the rules of the so called "additive colour-mixing" ("additive" because, starting from darkness=black, all colours can be mixed by adding spectral light colours - up to pure white light, if you push all colour channels to the max). It's primary colours are red, green and blue (RGB). If you print your painting, it will be converted to body colours, wich means something like material colours (we call it "Körperfarben" in germany, don't know the right english word for it). These are colours, that are the result of the reflection of light colours from different kinds of material surfaces, depending on the material characteristics of this surfaces. This colour mixing is called "substractive colour mixing", because the colour effect results from the only parts of the light spectrum, that are reflected. The other parts of the spectrum are absorbed. The primary colours of this colour mixing are cyan, magenta and yellow. And because it's in fact nearly impossible to mix pure black with this three colours, printers need the additional so called "Keycolour" black (CMYK). The colours of body-colour-mixing are the complementary colours of the primary colours of the light-colour-mixing (red-cyan, green-magenta, blue-yellow). The CMYK-colour-space is much smaller than the RGB-colour-space. Because of this, printed digital pictures will never have exactly the same colours as the picture they are based on. But, of course, they should do as far as possible. For this reason you should convert your pictures carefully from RGB to CMYK with an image editing software like Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Affinity Photo or something similar. As far as I know, even Krita can do this. ArtRage unfortunatly can't do this.

    The second point is - and this is also verry important for controlled CMYK-conversion - that you should calibrate your hardware as good as you can. Unfortunatly, professional calibration is expensive, because you need a Colorimeter for it or leave that job to a professional.

    A third thing, you maybe should also know is, that the colur effect also depends on the stuff you will print on. Not only the colour of the substrat, but also it's material characteristics will have an effect on the colours. For that reason a huge amount of colour profiles exists. Colour profiles are additional software, that adds reliable, platform-independent informations about their colours to the image files. For high demands, I would suggest to talk to professional printer you trust in.

    Hope my english was good enough to understand what I wanted to say!
    Last edited by Somerset; 11-29-2020 at 01:35 AM.

  3. #3
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    have you tried turning off canvas lightingName:  Screenshot_2.png
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  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sandra35 View Post
    This may be an odd question. I'm having a few problems with colors. I like the setting my monitor is on and I know that's not the problem.
    Attached is a photo of what I'm dealing with. The photo to the right is artrage, while the photo to the left is how I actually see the photo anywhere else (ex. word or photo viewer) and the photo on the bottom is how the printed version looks.
    I'm a newbie at this, so if anyone knows what is going on or what I'm doing wrong please tell me.
    The big difference between of what you see on screen and the print out is likely a color management issue with your monitor, printer or both. Using the proper monitor color profile and printer color profile is important for matching. You can try to find better profiles online (or in your machine) or you can generate them using color calibration hardware.

    As Somerset mentioned, calibration hardware does not come cheaply. So buying both a monitor calibrator and a printer calibrator might be too expensive. I have both and I LOVE them. But in any case the following might save you some money and effort.



    I suggest you send your image file for printing at a local print shop, specifically ask for no processing and/or for them to print it with the most accurate and true-to-original colors as possible.

    Compare the professionally produced print (when in really good light) with the images on your monitor and with home made prints produced by your printer, on the best paper and with the highest quality settings available. Note, you should expect color saturation (and to some degree brightness and/or contrast) of the print to be lower than what you see on your screen - no home consumer printer has as wide a color gamut as modern monitors.

    Concentrate on Hue variances. If your monitor is producing hues which differ from the professionally produced print, your monitor likely needs a better color profile. If your home made print has hues which differ significantly from the professionally produced print, your printer likely needs to use a better color profile. Also, if your home made prints of pure grayscale colors produces off grays, then your printer is likely the culprit.


    Once you identify the culprit, make sure color management is turned on and look for color profiles for your hardware which might remedy the problem. Sometimes they are included in driver software disks or downloads, sometimes you can find them online. It's also important to use the paper settings in your printer which match the kind of paper you are using. If this is not correct your printer will be using the wrong color profile for that paper and hence the wrong colors could result.

    If you cant find a color profile which is good enough, you can buy the calibration solution only for the hardware which has the problem.

    I have Spyder3Print (printer profiling, now just SpyderPrint) and Spyder3 (monitor calibration, now SpyderX) from DataColor, and I love them.

    https://www.datacolor.com/photograph...ew/#workflow_2

    https://www.datacolor.com/photograph...ew/#workflow_3


    Good luck!
    Last edited by DarkOwnt; 12-09-2020 at 04:27 AM.

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