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I have designed a logo with a gradient of 3 RGB colours. I'm liking the colours for digital but now I want to duplicate the logo with CMYK colours for print. What is the best way to do this? Is it to pick the CMYK colours, print them out and see if they look similar to the screen? Also, should I use Pantone colours instead of CMYK colours if I can? I've picked some pantone colours, 806C, 2655C and 299C but when I print on my rubbish printer at home they come out dull. Im guessing this is just my printer as those pantone colours are meant to be quite vibrant!

I'm hoping to get this printed at a professional printers for t-shirts, business cards, leaflets etc.

Any help much appreciated. thanks,

See colour gradient below.

enter image description here

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    How is this going to be printed? On a regular home/office inkjet printer, commercial digital printer, or offset lithography, or screen printing, or some other print process? Please edit your question and add details. Thanks.
    – Billy Kerr
    Aug 4, 2020 at 9:52
  • Thanks Billy, I've updated my question now. I will send the logo to a professional printers who will use it to print t-shirts, business cards, leaflets etc.
    – sonicfroots
    Aug 4, 2020 at 10:43
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    I don't think you quite understood what I asked. What kind of print process will be used for printing those? Digital printing? Lithographic printing in CMYK (4 colour process), or spot colours? Screen Printing on t-shirts? Digital printing on t-shirts? etc.
    – Billy Kerr
    Aug 4, 2020 at 11:13
  • Be aware that there is no straightforward conversion from RGB to CMYK. These two models are very different, and the color range of CMYK is smaller than that of RGB. In addition, what RGB? (There are different models for that too.) How bright did you set your screen? Do you have a color-calibrated monitor? Best is to ask your print provider a sample run. One thing you'll immediately notice: you can see your screen colors even with all the lights turned off, because it emits light. Your printed sample will not do that. (Likely.)
    – Jongware
    Aug 4, 2020 at 11:39
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    If you dont know you keep it in rgb untill you know. That said you have wildly off gamut colors in your image.
    – joojaa
    Aug 4, 2020 at 13:21

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The standard advice is to use Pantone color guides (a set of swatch comparison cards) to get consistency between your selected color and its CMYK equivalent. When you get a faithful match between some acceptable Pantone and its CMYK equivalent, note the CYMK and use that and some online CMYK <-> RGB converter to get the CSS color.

Now you can at least be sure that the printed colors will be fairly close to those seen on the website.

Sure you can have separate plates for bright colors that you decide you must have. But this is only economic for longer print runs.

Short of that but still using digital printing you can try the new extended gamut printers which have orange and green inks and cover 95% of the Pantone colors - or so they say . . . .

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    I feel that this is a legacy workflow answer, but might wtill be appropriate for a small screenprinting shop.
    – joojaa
    Apr 13, 2021 at 4:23
  • It is still the most common answer to this sort of problem. I've amended the answer to offer more precise but also more expensive options.
    – Trunk
    Apr 13, 2021 at 13:32
  • That does not make it necceserily right. Problem is that specifying pantone only helps if your printing with a method that can accept pantone colors. Anyway our inkjet can certainly print that with no problems. But then again it can nearly print sRGB.
    – joojaa
    Apr 13, 2021 at 13:48
  • @joojaa I think it's time you shared the elegant solution of yours with the OP and the rest of us.
    – Trunk
    Apr 20, 2021 at 22:06
  • let the RIP convert it for you if possible. Simce the RIP works on converting the data as smallest possible elements it does not interpolate in cmyk.
    – joojaa
    Apr 21, 2021 at 3:44

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