Spent 8 hours fixing a color profile mismatch on a commissioned piece

I had a client in Portland ask for specific Pantone matching on a digital illustration for their packaging. Turns out my monitor was calibrated to sRGB but their printer used Adobe RGB, and the colors looked totally wrong after export. It took me a full Saturday of testing proofs and adjusting curves to finally get it right. Has anyone else dealt with printer-client color space issues that took way longer than expected?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor_fox13d agoMost Upvoted

Have you tried setting up soft proofing in your software first before even starting the project? Honestly that's what saved me after a similar nightmare with a local print shop last year. sRGB vs Adobe RGB is honestly such a pain, especially when your client's printer doesn't even tell you their color space until after you send the files. I ended up buying a cheap hardware calibrator and now I just match whatever profile they use before I start painting. Tbh it's worth the extra 20 minutes upfront to avoid a whole day of tweaking curves.

wood.john12d ago

Man one time I had a band want me to do their album art and they gave me a photo they took on an iPhone for reference. I spent like 3 hours matching the color of the sky in their photo only to find out later their "blue" was actually their phone screen being super warm and the actual sky was way more gray. I just sat there staring at my monitor feeling dumb for a solid minute lol.