Colors don't match printed

[joaocanudo]

Dear all

I'm not an expert using photoshop but I make some work for our company Intranet such as creating new icons.

I have an issue that I cannot udnerstand, maybe someone can help.

I've created some icons with backgoung color (R:124 G:188 B:217) that I need to insert into Powerpoint. They will be located inside Powerpoint boxes with same color and in the screen seems ok. Color exactly match.

The icon is a standard 72dpi png file, RGB color.

The problem is when I print the Powerpoint document - the colors are tottally different.

I was reading about similar issues, and it seems it's somehow related with Color amangement within Photoshop.

I already tried to create new icons, with the same color, CMYK and RGB versions. With different color profiles (Monitor RGB working space and all Color Management Policies turned off) but I cannot print the ppt with same colors.

Can you please help?

Manyh thanks in advance,

João

[Derek Cross]

It's physics – the gamut (range of colours) is much wider in the RGB color space than in CMYK which has a about a third less colours – bright orange and bright green, for example, can't be reproduced in CMYK. As it happens the light blue you have selected can be printed but may appear differently on different devices depending on how they are being managed.

[joaocanudo]

Thanks for the reply Derek

So basically you're saying it's not possible to match the icon with the Powerpoint box when printing?

If I create a new icon using CMYK, (in this case C:40 M:0 Y:0 K15) I will get the same result right?

What do you advise? Maybe best idea is to remove backgounf of all icons?

[Derek Cross]

I screen shot might help.

It depends on how much variance you're getting, what is causing it, how vital it is, and how much effort you're prepared to put in to overcoming issues.

[joaocanudo]

Ok, so, please see the first screenshot. As you can see the icons in front of the powerpoint boxes seems very nice, same colors:

And then the result when we print (sorry the bad quality, but you can check the color difference):

[Derek Cross]

I'm not a Powerpoint person but it looks as if you haven't matched the background colour to the colour of your logo?

Have you selected it to match?

[joaocanudo]

Yes, I'm using exactly the same color. Even if I use the eyedropper the result is the same.

If I don't print, the outcome is great - getting problems only when printing.

[melissapiccone]

I would use png with transparent backgrounds for these icons - eliminates the whole problem of matching colors.

[Derek Cross]

See if ensuring you're using the same Color Space – say sRGB – on both the logo and background helps.

[joaocanudo]

That was the color profile I was using by default in Photosop - I cheged to Monitor profile (it's saying when we choose that option it will disable color management).

I believe Powerpoint dont' have color management so I cannot add that anywhere.

[Derek Cross]

The screen shot (above) shows the drop-down (from the gear wheel icon) in Powerpoint indicating the choice of Color spaces.

[joaocanudo]

Maybe Mac version have that option. Windows Powerpoint does not have anyhting like that.