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No, No, No!!! March 24 at 1:46 AM

Well I bought Stainless for myself. Seeing it in print is beautiful, except seeing it in purple is painful. The only thing I can see of what went wrong was the RGB to CMYK conversion, or should I say lack there of.

This was a problem I thought of before I uploaded my first image, I dismissed it and I'll tell you why. I thought I should upload in CMYK, but the web, meaning internet browsers, won't display jpgs in CMYK. I searched all over the Zazzle website looking for something telling me what they accepted. They plainly state they only accept jpgs, which is fine, but nothing about color settings. I made an assumption and I was wrong. Although support still hasn't got back to me, I can't think of anything else it could be.

What makes me mad is they don't state it on their website. What really makes me mad is they do accept CMYK, and their thumbnail program converts to RGB but apparently they don't convert at all before they print. What makes me really really mad is they didn't see the problem after they printed it.

The only thing that saves them is that it looks absolutely beautiful (in color-blind eyes) as a print piece. But if anyone thinking about buying any of my stuff, DON'T RIGHT NOW! I have to fix this once support gets back to me, I'll let you know.

UPDATE: It's not the CMYK problem, support says that they expect files to be uploaded RGB. Whew! At least it's not me. They say the printer could have been miscalibrated. I believe so. But they said it could be one other thing that I want to test; monitor calibration. I believe with my whole heart that my monitor is perfectly calibrated but just to make sure I will ask anyone and everyone to comment. Everyone agree that it is

blue then purple?

If anyone can print this out on any kind of color printer (I don't have one) please do and get back to me any way you wish.

Garrett Mar 25, 2003 9:31 AM

No, neither of those two images contains any blue. I have a well-calibrated monitor here (two), and neither shows any blue at all.

The first image is gray (and slightly purple), and the second is a more gray purple. I think you need to recalibrate.
Steve Mar 25, 2003 12:54 PM

I'll agree it is very desaturated, but look at this.

Also, if my grey borders in photoshop are perfect greys, why do they come out brownish in print?
Garrett Mar 25, 2003 12:59 PM

It's hard to tell what you're asking when you say, "Is this blue?" What you should have asked is, "Is this gray with the smallest amount of blue noticable to the human eye but only when using the eye-dropper tool." Because that's what it is.
Steve Mar 25, 2003 1:04 PM

I don't mean to be precise, nor am I trying to proclaim myself right about it being blue.

All I'm really asking is that should I expect that much color shift during printing? It went from the blue spectrum to the purple.
Garrett Mar 25, 2003 1:07 PM

No, there is definitely a problem here. You should ask Zazzle to replace your print, first of all, and second, you should ask them what is causing this problem. Tell them you can provide the original in a strong color format (like a 32-bit TGA or something), and ask them why it wouldn't print correctly.
Steve Mar 25, 2003 1:13 PM

They told me they will replace it when I send it back. They will match it to the original doing whatever they do, and if it is a printing problem then they will replace it.

I can only see it as an isolated incident and I was unlucky this time. I have bought previous artwork and it has always been color perfect.
ryan Mar 25, 2003 7:29 PM

yes.

the first is sorta-kinda blueish in a way.

the second (the photo of the print) is sorta-kinda pupleish in a way.

Ultimatly all I can say is they the two are not the same color.
Kya Oct 06, 2003 4:58 PM

When you used Zazzle, did they require any set-up fee to color correct or clean up your digital files? If not, how do they commit to print quality? It seems like they would get a lot of complaints regarding images which were not set up correctly - there are many artists who are not comfortable in photoshop???
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