Shading Blue

[GrubbyFingers]

Hi Guys,

Happy Australia Day! Yes, we're having a barbecue today.

I'm having some trouble with my blue GA aircraft. The shading I've applied over the dark blue colours is turning out very grey when printed. The shading itself is black colour airbrush in a separate layer with the blend mode set to Multiply.

Similar, and well known, problems shading yellows are fixed with using a dull red for the shading, but none of the colours I've tried seems to solve the problem for blues.

Bear in mind that, while the colour space is Adobe RGB 1998, the screen grab is a print-preview soft proof with my printer profile and paper colour activated. It's pretty close to the result I'm getting on paper.

They are just missing that oomph.

Anyone got any ideas?

Grubby.

[x4btr]

From the printer's perspective, it will want to add more yellow ink to this print to achieve the result you're after. So, how to convince the device to do so?

Have you tried to make your shading layer a dark green colour instead of black? Or perhaps experiment with yet another layer over the blue areas, specifically, with a yellow colour on Hue blend mode at 20% opacity, or so? Not enough to really dramatically alter the appearance, but enough to convince the printer to add yellow.

Indeed, I would not be surprised if the required on-screen appearance of the blue colour was not quite strange looking to get the printer to do as you wish.

[inkworm]

Stick on some pylons and underwing stores, that will give it some 'oomph'!

What about working a bit more on the actual reflections as it looks like it should have a glossy finish from your illustration, well on the door it does, bring out the gloss more is my suggestion.

[GiantFlyingRobots]

Try using the same shade of blue with the brush itself set to multiply or some such.

[Eagleskinner]

I have no clue really, but I would hazard a guess: try rendering the image in CMYK first?

Only reason I suggest this is that printers work that way. I know when I try printing my w-i-p pictures when I am painting, shadows always appear a lot darker on paper..

[GrubbyFingers]

I've sorted the issue. I was previewing with a redundant ICC profile so I was never going to get what I saw on screen to appear on a print. The shading in question was out of the printer's gamut. All fixed now!