Expert: LizaL - 7/20/2005

Question
Hi. I use photoshop 5.5. and work on a mac I Book. I am a textile designer and need find a way to print out a book of colours (with reference of colour recipe) so I can accurately match what comes out of my printer to whatever fabric etc I am trying to colour match. The colours need to reasonably cover the whole spectrum. Is there a way...there must be?! Please help as I am always wasting time guessing how my colours are going to print out. Thanks.

Answer
Hi Angela,

If I understand you correctly, you want to be sure that the colors you create in Photoshop will match the fabrics you're working with. If I've misunderstood you, I apologize, and invite you to clarify! But I take your question to mean you need something printed from your computer to go by.

If that's right -- you should understand that what you see on your screen is NEVER what you're actually going to print. I've been a designer for 21 years now, and have dealt with many printers along the way. And the only way I've ever found to get true color from anything I've designed is to have the work printed offset, by a commercial printer. I've learned by having things print poorly that you can't ever trust your screen to be the same as what you expect in terms of output. And it's also not possible from a mechanical standpoint, because your computer's monitor displays color using phosphors -- while the printed piece uses ink and a surface material such as paper.

So what I would recommend is using a Pantone swatch book to help you create your colors in Photoshop. If you get a Pantone process book, it'll give you all the amounts of CMY and K to use, to achieve a certain color. Then, even if you print a sample and it doesn't *look* right from your printer, you'll know it's right because you followed the Pantone formula.

Here's a link to a Pantone distributor, where you can get that swatch book I mentioned:
http://www.colorguides.net/process.html

So that's the way to make sure your color is correct. As far as making sure what you've created in Photoshop matches a certain fabric, I can't help you there -- because as I explained, your computer's monitor is never an accurate representation of what your printed output will be.

For more information on dealing with color, you can visit the Pantone site:
http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArea=1&bShowProducts=1

Hope this helps! And if I've misunderstood what you want to do, let me know. I'll be out of my office for the next week or so, though.

Lisa