It's easier to design things in RGB color space to bypass strange issues with how various RIPs handle CMYK files, as well as all the color profile variables that come with handling CMYK. It's not too hard to control CMYK if you're handling everything in house. But when you have to hand something off for someone else to print CMYK can be a real pain.
Of course RGB has its own issues. A huge part of the RGB color space is well out of the gamut range of printers. The art has to be converted to CMYK at some point in the process. If care isn't taken in the design stage working in RGB can lead to some really terrible, unpredictable results.
landdesigns said:
Hello, Im designing my graphics on Coreldraw and using a Verscamm to make the graphics. When doing a graphic I sometimes I use fountain fills in the designs , but when trying to do a fountain fill with black to another color like red or blue it looks awful.
What's the CMYK formula for black in that gradient? Is it a flat black with 100% black ink only? If so, that would be part of the problem. Gradients from colors like red or blue over to black look better with a "rich black" featuring black ink and at least some percentage of the other gradient color. The default black in Adobe Photoshop measures out to C=75, M=68, Y=67, K=90. That comes out to a total ink number of 300. Some kinds of paper or vinyl can't take that much ink so the formula has to go lower. A few years ago we received a customer's banner file featuring a black that was pretty wet looking coming out of the printer. It turned out the black was set with all for CMYK levels at 100%. Jeez.