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I designed a flyer in Photoshop, consisting of bright text over a dark stock image, and tried to print it on my own printer to get some idea of what it would look like when professional printed. However, when printed the dark background of the stock image can only be described as very muddy, to the point of being barely visible, even while the text itself stands out fine.

The Photoshop document is CMYK and was exported to PDF for printing, and looking at the specs for the printer, it seems to support CMYK, so it doesn't seem that a conversion from RGB is happening here.

Is this a design problem, and therefore something that's likely to crop up when taking the design to the printer, or something else?

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  • What kind of printer do you have? Inkjet or laser? – curious♦ Jan 12 at 22:55
  • @curious This is the printer, I'm pretty sure it's an inkjet, but my confusion about this problem comes from the fact that it seems to support CMYK. – Prometheus Jan 12 at 22:56
  • what type of paper did you print on? Laser typically outputs mediocre color but it seems to be an inkjet. Could also be a paper thing. – curious♦ Jan 12 at 23:00
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    I read the spec's ... where are you seeing CMYk support? I found nothing about print technologies used. Typically it's PCL or CUPS.... If you are seeing "colors" that's not the same as support for CMYK. I have an Epson multifunction which is markable higher quality than this one and it does not support CMYK data. I can not fathom that the XP-315 would. – Scott Jan 13 at 1:06
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    Theoretically yes, if you have a well calibrated system and are using correct color profiles. If you want or need a color proof, you can get that from a commercial printer before the job is run (but it does cost). – Scott Jan 13 at 1:13

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