"If I Had Only Known When I Started This Deck That ......"

annabel398

Computer monitors produce colors with light, the three primary colors of which are Red Green Blue (RGB). Red + blue make magenta (fuchsia), blue + green make cyan (turquoise), and red + green make yellow.

Yes. Red + green = YELLOW.

Now, this is colored light we're talking about.

On the other hand, to produce cards (books, magazines, etc.), we must use INKS, not light, and there are four primary ink colors: cyan (aka "process blue," aka blue-green), magenta (aka fuchsia), yellow, and black. CMYK, where K = blacK because B is already taken. Think about those pop art paintings of blown-up comics... The dots are CMYK.

(Edited to add: okay, any more it's usually toner rather than ink, but toner is also CMYK, so same difference.)

It gets complicated, because the two systems don't match up exactly in terms of what colors they can reproduce (called the "gamut"). Paint a solid cyan rectangle in your favorite painting program, and print it on a color printer. Not the same color AT ALL, are they?

it may be that your monitor needs calibration. More likely than not, actually. And it may also be that your printer's equipment needs calibration (frankly, less likely--most of these guys spend real money on color calibration). And it may be that the color you're creating on-screen (with light) can't actually be reproduced in ink.

A good printer will supply you (if asked) with a calibration card, so you can at least try to make what you see match what you'll get.

Here's a tip: make a file consisting of your favorite color palette and have your printer print it. Now compare the printout to the same file on your screen. This will help you understand what can and can't be reproduced.

If you own a color printer (they're so cheap these days!), find the manuals that came with it and run the calibrations they built in. You might be surprised how much your printouts improve!
 

tarotbear

Dear annabel398~

I always wondered what the K was for! I figured out the others. (Yes- I worked in lighting design - Red + Green = Yellow!)

Thank you for the explanation for these things; however - everyone is treating this as though it is MY printer that is doing this; Both the cards in that one example were printed by two different professional printing companies from the same file on professional equipment.

However, I am still confused by the TGC statement "Our website will only accept RGB images. CMYK images will be rejected. However, for the closest color matching, we recommend that designers develop in CMYK and then convert their files to RGB before uploading them to our site." Is converting from CMYK to RGB as easy as saving a file from WORD in doc, docx, or PDF by choosing which one to save it into? :confused:
 

annabel398

However, I am still confused by the TGC statement "Our website will only accept RGB images. CMYK images will be rejected. However, for the closest color matching, we recommend that designers develop in CMYK and then convert their files to RGB before uploading them to our site." Is converting from CMYK to RGB as easy as saving a file from WORD in doc, docx, or PDF by choosing which one to save it into? :confused:

Yes, it's pretty much that easy, though it's done from a menu command rather than *during* the save. That printer's instructions seem a little odd (the part about converting to RGB, I mean) but the cardinal rule is to do whatever the printer says.

Did you know that Adobe has released the CS2 creative suite (which includes Photoshop) officially for free? You REALLY owe it to yourself to quit painting with a bowling ball. If the only feature you ever learn is layers, it will be worth it! Here ya go, Mr. Bread-Eater :)

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/creative-suite-2-activation-end-life.html

You'll need an Adobe ID; if you don't already have one, create one. Then just expand step 2, Download and Install, and follow the directions. Note that this page has the activation numbers too, so write the appropriate number down before you navigate away from it.


Adobe said:
Make sure that your computer meets these requirements:

Mac OS X v.10.2.8–v.10.3.8. PowerPC® G4 or G5 processor
Microsoft® Windows® 2000/Windows XP. Intel® Pentium® III or 4 processor
 

tarotbear

You REALLY owe it to yourself to quit painting with a bowling ball.

Hey~! :) Last year I bought myself a Wacom digital drawing pad and was going to learn to use it over the winter since there was so little of the deck done at that point that I had hoped to learn something new from their art programs and apply it to the entire deck. Of course - having a flooded apt and many other traumas stopped me from doing anything with it ... damn thing is still in it's box - UNOPENED and UNUSED !
 

annabel398

Heheh, I really meant your software, not your hardware. I've been using Photoshop since 1.0, and I've gotten along just fine with a mouse all these years. (Thanks, mom and dad, for the fine-motor-control genes.)

But when I read you're colorizing a deck using MSPaint...! I want to fly to wherever you are just to MAKE you install Photoshop and give you a tutorial on the basics. You'd thank me for the rest of your life. =)
 

tarotbear

I was going to download GIMP at one point - but I was almost halfway through the deck (excuses, excuses) at that point and did not know how the change might affect the artwork - would you see a notable difference between the old and new images, etc., etc. Rather than stop and re-learn and re-do I decided to finish the project in the program in which it was started.

Since the prospect of me creating another 78-card deck are EXTREMELY NIL - I do have to do 4 or 5 illustrations for a couple of my books - working in GIMP or Photoshop would be more for a lark ... I really need to get some classes in this stuff ...
 

annabel398

"For a lark" is a fine reason to download CS2!
Because it is an older version, you should be able to pick up some how-to books for a song--do they have Half-Price Books in your neck of the woods?

(HPB is where I picked up my much-cherished copy of It's All in the Cards...)
 

blackroseivy

To throw in my 2 cent's worth - I thought I had lost my files but recovered them, thank goodness! But I would say I wish I had known how fickle the computer can be when it comes to saving files. Just always back up!!
 

JOdel

BTW - What does CMYK stand for, and what does it mean as far as color reproduction, exactly?

This is what The Game Crafter says about 'Color Profiles' : (hope this opens for you)

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/help/color-profiles

Annabel398 pretty much sorted this one out. RGB is the definitive "additive" color system. The more of anything you add the lighter the result gets. CMYK is the printing industry's "subtractive" system where the more of any pigment you add the darker the result.

One of the most memorable failures to communicate of my childhood was in 1955 when someone came across a brand new educational film on comparisons of color theory which used, among other things color television broadcasting (which was in development, although i don't think it was on the market yet) showing the red+green=yellow, and red+green+blue=white as well as the CMYK system for printing.

Only... we were 9 years old, in 4th grade, and we were not mixing colors with inks, we were mixing them with pigments. Little pans of watercolor cakes of pigment to be exact. And while I could *about* get a red from yellow and magenta, cyan and Magenta did NOT produce blue, and red and green produced only a muddy brown. Artists are not printers, and *their* primaries are red, yellow, and blue. (Printers have a fifth primary, which is the color of the paper, and is mixed with *all* of the inks to produce the final result.)

I suspect that TGC's discovered from experience that they get more consistent results from RGB files. Their suggestion to build the file in CMYK and to convert it before submitting it is to get around the problem mentioned in my earlier post of producing colors that simply cannot be printed, regardless. CMYK is far less likely to do that. And you won't see much of a difference going from RGB to CMYK. Moving in the other direction can be a nasty surprise.

And I second the recommendation to download Photoshop CS2 or GIMP. Yes, there is a learning curve. But the access to *necessary* tools is more than worth the agro.
 

roxana

Picasso is quoted somewhere as having said "I do 'art' every single day." If you can only work on your designs once a week - set a schedule and stick to it. Tenacity and perseverance are going to help you reach completion. NEVER GIVE UP.

Thank you for the best advice. Once I started a computer generated deck in Photoshop and made about 10 cards. It was two years ago and I gave up. Now I started another - oil painted on canvas, as this technique gives me a real feeling. I am finishing the third. Too many to go. it is good not to establish the completion date but do it every day a bit.