Expert: Elmer - 9/11/2010

Question
screen colors on laptop not the same as printed copy.

How do I fix this to see the correct color on design stage ?

thanks - Jay

Answer
Hi Jay - This is a colour management issue.

A quick nerd description:
Your monitor/screen operates with RGB (red,green,blue) Colour mode but your printer works in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black).

1: To begin with if you use RGB colours in corel it must then convert them to CMYK to print them with mixed results. Usually the print colours will be different. Always work in CMYK colours.

2: Colour management is the way the Coreldraw software displays what colours you input. Open your document, click on tools and click on colour management. In the diagram that displays click on the three colour circles in the centre. This is the central colour mode that Corel uses before it translates to the printer and the monitor.

The central colour mode should be set to Generic internal RGB profile

Select the arrow from the central colour mode to the printer (if it isn't already)

Select the arrow from your printer to your monitor and deselect all others.

Finally your monitor must be colour optimised to get the best on-screen to print comparison. This is however more to do with your computer settings than Corel.

Good luck and I hope that helped.

Cheers.