[jwelsh5]

Hello all,

I'm a student focusing on Printmaking and I am colorblind. I have always had help matching colors from other classmates but I really need to find a better way.

I am able to find colors that work for me on photoshop/illustrator and then I just get help matching the ink color to the color on the computer screen.

Pantones seem like one way to go but that is just too expensive for me right now. The school I go to provides CMYK inks so I figured the best choice would be to use that. I changed my color settings on photoshop to process colors.

I bought a scale to that I can measure out ink by weight. I then viewed the info about the color I wanted to test.

The color is a light yellowish brown. I came up on photoshop as; C:26% M:47% Y:100% and K:6%

I was confused by these numbers but classmates told me it was referring to how much ink I should use based on scoops so I just changed each % to grams. So for a clear example; C:26g M:47g Y:100g and K:6g.

The color ended up mixing to a green.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? Any advice is greatly appreciated. This is a pretty hard spot to be in since I plan on making printmaking my life. I really need to find a solution to color mixing.

Thank you,
Jordan

 

[sben763]

Mixing process inks doesn't work well for doing this. They are transparent and the mix ratios won't always work due to they inks don't always mix completely to make the color.

In your example the yellow may be the center of a cluster of dots. Then the cyan, magenta and black all be offset to the side which can't be seen from 1 ft away but under a microscope it is visible. I'll try to post an example.

 

[Ripcord]

Yes, CMYK builds are not intended to be mixed, rather (as Sean mentioned) printed in halftone percentages to build the desired color. You would only use these inks if you are printing 4-color process.

For spot colors, you can match most any Pantone color fairly closely by mixing standard colors of plastisol ink.

I stock bright red, lemon yellow, bright green, bright blue, ultramarine (reflex) blue, deep purple. white, and black ink. Using these I can mix any shade of blue, green, pink, gold, maroon, teal, orange, or brown.

Just having a few colors of nk and using them to mix other colors can save you a lot of money.

 

[sben763]

this is a simulated process but same principal. The red and yellow make brown here when printed but if you were to mix these in the same amounts as printed you would come up with orange