Printing Skintones Part II

A while back we posted a blog post about just how hard it is to print skintones properly. But the printer is just one piece of the puzzle. A big part of it also comes from the source of your file. 

If you're creating a file that will need to be printed, you can set your file up for success just by making a couple of basic adjustments. 

The biggest reason why skin tones don't come out the way you think they will is that printing and screens use different colour spaces. You're used to seeing colours on a monitor that uses RGB (red, green, blue) but printed materials use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). 

Chances are, your skin tones will come out a bit red because your file is using more magenta than yellow. A simple way to fix that is with a simple levels adjustment or curves adjustment. 

Want to learn more about how to do that? Check out this tutorial to get some tips about how to prep your skintone filled files for print.