I think the most commonly miscalculated element in any printing job is the color. It looks great in your screen and even when you print your file from your laser printer. But after you sent your printing job to the shop and you get your print materials back, lo and behold! Your output does not appear to be the way you actually imagined it to be. Worse – the colors does not even begin to reflect the ones you’ve chosen from the first to represent your image or brand to your target audience.

This is one of the most important printing tips that you have to remember when you’re creating your marketing campaign material for your business: what you see in your screen and your laser printer is not usually what you get when you use a high resolution imagesetter or a printing house.

This is because the colors you see in your screen are totally different from what the printing equipment applies. A computer monitor uses RGB for its color scheme while the printing process applies CMYK in each of its printing job.

So how do you make sure that you get the right color you want for your marketing campaign piece? By actually using some of these printing tips and ideas for your next printing job:

First and foremost, you have to use CMYK colors instead of RGB if you want a four-color process that needs a color separation procedure. As I’ve said, your computer screen applies RGB which can become a problem when you send your print job to the printers because most printing equipment uses CMYK. You’ll definitely get a different color shade when your print job comes out of the press as your printer would have to change it to CMYK for easy printing. So convert to CMYK first before you send them out.

In whatever program you use, always make a list of all the colors used as exactly as they are indicated in the graphic image. It is common that correct colors are left out because the designer has not been able to list all the colors used. This is when printing problems usually occur, one of which is creating more negatives than you really need just because you have not been accurate with your color label. Hence, a waste of both your time and money.

For spot colors, you need to click on the OFF when you apply this type of color scheme.

For better production of your print job, here are some more color printing tips to help you:

- Use two-color combination instead of three or four especially if you’re using lighter shades. A change in density, even in the littlest amount can greatly affect the appearance of your color.

- Secondary colors such as orange, green and violet are not easy to match with four-color printing. Apply a fifth color using spot to get good results. You would have additional costs though for the fifth color.

- Use the four primary process colors more often as they reproduce well in four-color printing.

At PrintPlace.com, you actually get the right color according to how you imagined them to appear in your promotional materials. This is because at PrintPlace.com, we have state-of-the-art equipment that allows for color to be true to the original.