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Spent three hours trying to get a font color to look right on a dark background
Honestly, I was working on a poster for a local music event, and the main text was a bright teal. On my screen, it looked fine over the dark blue background, but when I sent a test print, it just looked dull and muddy, like it was blending in. I must have tweaked the hue, saturation, and brightness sliders in Illustrator for what felt like forever, trying maybe 15 different shades. I even pulled out my old Pantone book to try and match a spot color, thinking that was the issue. Ngl, it was only when I switched the whole project to a different monitor that I saw the original color was actually way off. Has anyone else had a simple color picker problem turn into a huge time sink? What's your go-to fix for making sure colors pop on dark backgrounds without looking weird in print?
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vera6817mo ago
Oh man, the part about the test print looking muddy is so real. I wasted a whole afternoon once because my laptop screen was way too bright and made a dark purple look vibrant. It printed out looking basically black. My fix now is to always check the color on my phone screen too before I commit, and I keep a cheap printed color chart from my home printer as a rough guide. It's never just a quick slider tweak, it always turns into a whole thing.
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ninaramirez7mo ago
Why not just trust your screen and embrace the surprise?
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