Colour Matching and Print Technique

Your computer screen produces colour by combining red, green, and blue light (the RGB colour system). This is an additive system: the more light added, the brighter the colour. Your screen can display colours of extraordinary vibrancy and luminosity because it is generating light directly.

Fabric printing, by contrast, works in the CMYK colour system (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks). This is a subtractive system: the inks absorb light rather than emit it. No matter how sophisticated the printing equipment, fabric-printed colours will never have the same luminosity as colours viewed on a screen. Understanding this from the outset sets appropriate expectations.

Additionally, the fabric itself affects colour. A white silk twill reflects light differently from a white modal jersey. The same print file will produce subtly different results on each. This is not a flaw in the process. It is the nature of printing on different substrates. Managing it intelligently is part of the skill of turning artwork into merchandise.

The practical implication for artists is this: always convert your working files to CMYK colour mode before sending to a manufacturer. If you work in RGB (as most digital artists and photographers do), the automatic conversion that happens during printing can shift colours unpredictably, particularly in saturated blues, purples, and oranges.

There are two primary methods used for printing artwork onto fabric: digital printing and screen printing. Each has distinct advantages and limitations, and choosing the right method for your work is one of the most important technical decisions you will make.

Digital printing (also called direct-to-fabric or dye sublimation): The design is printed directly from a digital file onto the fabric using specialised inkjet technology. Advantages include very low minimum order quantities (sometimes as few as 10 units), high resolution reproduction, and the ability to handle photographic complexity and gradients with accuracy. Limitations include slightly softer colour saturation compared to screen printing, and cost per unit remains relatively consistent regardless of quantity (no large economy of scale).

Screen printing: A separate screen is created for each colour in the design. Ink is pushed through the screen onto the fabric. Advantages include very high colour vibrancy, excellent accuracy for solid colour areas, and significant cost savings at higher quantities. Limitations include high setup costs (each colour screen can cost £50 to £150), an inability to handle continuous-tone photographic imagery or complex gradients, and minimum order quantities typically starting at 100 to 200 units per colourway.

For most artists creating their first merchandise collection, digital printing is the appropriate starting point. Lower minimums reduce financial risk, and the reproduction quality for fine art and photographic work is excellent.

A strike-off (sometimes called a test print or colour proof) is a small-scale sample print of your design on the actual production fabric. It is the single most important quality control step in the colour management process, and you should never approve a production run without one.

What the strike-off shows you:

• Colour accuracy: How close is the printed colour to your original artwork and your screen reference? Are there any unexpected shifts in hue, saturation, or brightness?
• Detail reproduction: Are fine lines, delicate textures, and subtle tonal gradations being reproduced faithfully? Or are they softening, bleeding, or disappearing?
• Colour relationships: Does the relationship between colours in the print match the relationship in your original? Sometimes individual colours match well but their relationship to each other shifts in an unexpected way.
• Ground colour: How does the design look against the natural colour of the fabric? Even a white fabric has a slight warm or cool cast that affects the printed colours around it.

Review your strike-off in natural daylight, not under artificial lighting. Colours look very different under fluorescent or tungsten light. Stand back and view it from the distance a customer would view a displayed scarf. Then look closely at the detail. Document your observations clearly before communicating feedback to the manufacturer.

The most common source of frustration in the sampling process is unclear feedback. A manufacturer cannot act on feedback like "the colours look a bit off" or "it does not feel right." They need specific, actionable guidance that a technical professional can translate into a file adjustment.

When writing colour correction feedback, be precise about:

• Which colour you are commenting on: Name the specific area of the design and describe the colour by reference to the original (for example, "the deep navy in the lower left border").
• The direction of the correction needed: Is the printed colour too warm (more yellow/red) or too cool (more blue/green)? Too bright or too muted? Too light or too dark?
• Your reference point: Are you comparing to the original painting, a printed Pantone reference, a screen reference, or a previous sample? Be explicit about which reference is definitive.

If possible, provide a physical reference rather than relying on digital communication alone. Send the manufacturer a printed colour reference, a Pantone chip, or even a chip of the original painted surface. Physical references are unambiguous in a way that email descriptions can never be. This small additional effort often eliminates an entire round of sampling.