Getting Prettier Prints Out of Your Large Format Printer

Getting Prettier Prints Out of Your Large Format Printer.

So you've worked long and hard creating a lush vibrant colorful design that you need to print to your large format printer or that you need to send to a service bureau for large format printing. But when you see your print, it's flat, dull and plane. Why? Most likely you have sent a CMYK file to the large format printer.

All or most large format printers are multi-color printers. They contain anywhere from 6 to 12 separate ink cartridges. The colors are usually something like Cyan, Photo Cyan, Magenta, Photo Magenta, Yellow, Black, Matte Black, Red, Green. Blue, Gray, Photo Gray.

CMYK has a limited color gamut compared to RGB. The larger color gamut of RGB gives you more options for a lush vibrant print. So you should send your file to the large format printer as an RGB file. Ideally, you'd want to work from the start in RGB for large format output. That way you don't get any nasty color changes if you convert from CMYK to RGB prior to large format printing.