People who are planning to send files to a digital printer need to ensure that the colours are the correct ones selected for the signage to be made. This article discusses some helpful tips to ensure that you send files with the correct colours to the printer.

RGB Vs CMYK

The colours that are produced by desktop printers often differ from those displayed by commercial digital printing equipment. Desktop computers and laptops display the RGB (red, green and blue) colour combinations that give images a crisp, bright appearance on a screen. Desktop printers produce prints that resemble what you see on the screen. However, commercial printers display colours in the CMYK range (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Consequently, the prints are likely to look different if you submitted your files in the RGB range for a printing job that will be done using the CMYK colour combination. Avoid any discrepancies in what you expect and what comes out by converting your files to the CMYK range before submitting files for digital printing.

Avoid Faded Black

Have you ever seen digital signage with some black sections that look faded? The cause for such an imperfection was improper colour selection while the signage was being designed. Not all black is the same. Design software usually gives options, such as rich black and text black, to select from. Rich black (a combination of cyan, yellow, black and magenta) is better suited to the larger signage sections and text, while text black is better for smaller sections and fonts, such as those below 12-point. Ensure that you select colour printing so that the beauty of rich black is brought out fully.

Watch the Colour Blue

Digital signage can have unwanted purple sections if the colour blue isn't used with care. The way you mix magenta and cyan is responsible for this problem. For instance, using equal values of these colours increases the likelihood that the prints will have unwanted purple. Avoid such an outcome by making sure that magenta is less than cyan. For instance, you can select 60% cyan and 25% magenta so that the blue sections of your prints stay blue without a tinge of purple.

The process of setting the colours in digital signage designs requires a degree of experience and skill that you may not have. Work closely with an experienced design professional so that he or she can come up with designs whose colours will appear exactly as you want them to.