Hi there,

I am using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I scan my drawings and then, as a novice, I have been manipulating the colours so that they look nice and bright. I have now discovered, after reading the discussions in the forum, that this is not a good idea, because the screen shows RGB and the printing process uses CMYK.

Now I'm worried. Could somebody please tell me the best / simplest way to ensure that I am not creating an image that is too bright and will therefore have a major colour difference when printed?

I am a bit worried now and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to tone down some of my brighter designs as they just won't work in print. Am I correct?

P.s. I'm wondering: is Photoshop better than Photoshop Elements for preparing images for print?

All help gratefully received!

Best wishes,

Babs

There is probably a better way, but I think if you just print out a copy on your home printer, it will give you a general idea of how your design will look.

MP

Does Elements have an option to preview your design in CMYK?

I'm guessing not

Printing your design out on paperlike MP said might be the easiest way to proof things. It still won't look exactly like how it'll show on a shirt but it'll at least be a lot closer and tell you if that super bright blue is going to come out more purple, or the super bright green is just going to be regular green.

You can try putting a lot of smaller versions of your design on one piece of paper to save ink, time and money.

quote:

Originally posted by Fricka:

You can try putting a lot of smaller versions of your design on one piece of paper to save ink, time and money.

I've put nine small images on one shirt and ordered it as a test sample. One image needed fixed for a "surprise" color.

MP

Hi MP and Fricka,

Thank you for your replies!

I was wondering if there was a way of previewing CMYK in Elements too, so that answers my question. I have toned the colours down to start with, just to be on the safe side, as they were very high contrast. I will do as you suggest and print them out on one page, to see if I get any surprises too. Great idea, thanks! :-)

Babs