Viewing color on a screen

Why viewing color on a screen is a bad idea when printing 

There is a lot of science that goes into color. To keep it simple, we cannot determine what color you want by viewing an image on a screen. We either need a physical sample or a printed swatch to determine what color might be possible. Without that we are all hoping for the best and may wind up disappointed.  

Volumes have been written on the science of color. Without going into all the technical detail behind color, suffice it to say that whatever you see on an electronic device, your phone, computer screen or tablet, you really don’t know how accurate it is color-wise. To make matters worse, that same image viewed on multiple devices may look different. What you see on your screen may look different on our screen. And the problem doesn’t stop there. Once the color you think you see on a screen is printed it may look very different. 

The only way to accurately view color when printing is to see it on the substrate being printed (paper or glass) in the actual spot color*or in a CMYK mix. Also keep in mind that especially with CMYK printing, not all colors are possible.   

*If your project involves screen printing on glass we MUST have a Pantone Solid Color Number. This is a 3 or 4 digit number followed by the letter “C”. Any other Pantone number, especially those with a mix of numbers and letters will not work for us.