War Stories: Color House Tales

A big part of the problem lies in the phrase, “skilled color operator.” Color monitors are RGB devices (they produce light in the same three primary colors that your eye detects and processes), and web presses are CMYK devices (the pages they produce reflect light through transparent inks, each of which blocks one and passes two of the RGB primaries; that’s why cyan and magenta are such ugly colors). The vast difference in how color is produced on a monitor and on a press creates equally vast differences between what you see on screen and what you see on paper, no matter how much calibration goes on.