#print experiment

Disclaimer: I have no idea how to print art. But I wanted to try out printing some of my art and test the difference between CMYK and RGB. 

(Recently I learned about these 2 modes: apparently RGB refers to light colors and is the way to go when your work doesn’t have to leave the screen, while CMYK is what most printers work with and you should use it for printed art as they’re pigment aka real life colors.)

It’s not the first time I print something mine. Since SAI supports RGB, I must have printed RGB stuff and it looked fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  But since CMYK should have been used, I chose this painting (painted in RGB) and converted it to CMYK with Photoshop to see the difference.

CMYK looks bad. Perhaps it’s only cause we’re seeing it through a screen… let’s print it. I use a Canon printer and glossy photographic paper is all I have.

Okay this is very dumb: you’re looking at a bad photograph through a screen. But look at the light saber: CMYK looks way duller than RGB and overall has less contrast.

I expected some kind of printing miracle but… no.  RGB looks better: more vivid, more contrast.

That leads me to the following questions: should I have painted in CMYK mode from the very start? Even if other people recommend painting in RGB, then do what I did? Should I adjust the colors once in CMYK (cause they looked bad) ? Or is the paper/home printer I used somewhat relevant? Perhaps a professional printer would really work better with CMYK (?)

*I found this thread. Apparently some printers do work better in RGB but all this printing stufff is really complicated e.e

**Another strange thing: apparently when I open the .psd with SAI, CMYK colors are shown (even if it’s RGB!) I really don’t understand why ;A;