by Søren Muus - 16 september 2006

THE PROBLEMS COMPARING SCREEN COLOUR AND PRINT COLOUR
joyfully as it can be to play and choose among the billions of colours, when making a suitable palette for a complete visual identity program. Just as frustrating it is, when you have to determine and describe the same colours for screen AND print usage.

I bet that every designer has felt it quite frustrating to pick and determine matching print- and screen colours, not only a single colour, but a whole range of colours that has to look good together - and especially if they are not primary, but secondary or tertiary!

I bet that every designer has tried to make a client understand why he can't compare additive and subtractive colours, holding the company brochure with the logo, next to the screen; showing the same logo, complaining it isn't the same colour.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the unsolvable problems between the additive and subtractive colours - the colour of things vs. the colour of light - here's a little lesson:

Subtractive colours
In good old days there were only subtractive colours - additive colours solely existed in Goethe's or Newton's labs. Subtractive colours works by absorbing some colours and reflecting others. Those reflected are the ones we see - or rather experience - since colours are only rays of light that our brains perceive and translate into the concept of "red" or "green". Dark colour absorbs all light, whilst white reflects most light - that's why a black surface is always warm in the sun.

Subtractive colours are also the type of colours that most people has the most practical experience with: They are the ones we play and mess with in kindergarten. They are the ones we paint, print and dye with: they are the ones that surround us on everything.

Subtractive colours are subject to certain rules, as most children know; there are three primary colours; red, blue and yellow, plus the contrasts black and white. By mixing them, you can get almost any colour; yellow and blue makes green, red and yellow makes orange. And if you mix all of them, they?ll turn into some greyish paste.

Additive colours
Additive colour, is light itself; coloured light. But besides at dawn and sunsets, we don't experience that we're surrounded by additive colours the same way as we are with subtractive colours, though sunlight is sort of an additive colour, a mix of all colours of light (a prism will show you).

It's only in small, focused areas we are aware that we meet additive colours: and mostly on screens.Television screens, computer screens, even the screen on your Ipod, works by additive colours. But you didn't get to play with them in kindergarten, you don't work with them, you don't think of them. Very few people have practical experience with them, or need to, for that matter.

Additive colours are also subject to certain rules. They also have three primary colours; a bluish red, a very bright green and an almost turquoise blue, you probably know them as "Red, green and blue? (RGB). But there aren't any contrast colours: Black and white, as with subtractive colours. "white" is all three lights turned on. "Black" is all three lights turned off.

Additive colours mix in a completely different way: the more you mix them, the brighter they get. To get yellow you have to mix red light and green light and so on. This makes it very hard to make lightly toned colours such "sand" or light "lime".

Additive colours also have another problem; it's depending on a medium; whereas subtractive colours often are the medium itself; a blue dyed shirt or a red painted car. Additive colours need lamps, tubes or LCD to work. And the quality of this medium determines the quality of the final outcome - despite the input is the same: Just look at the screen wall in your local TV shop.

How to match additive and subtractive colours
In a visual identity program, colours are often used as a very important part of the identification. For a great many years, the print colour has been steering the screen colour: "We have a logo in Pantone 159, now we need one in RGB - what's the equivalent?"

Today it's more common in the opposite direction; from screen to print. But in both cases it's impossible to compare a single additive colour with a single subtractive colour!

It helps a bit if there is more than a single colour to compare. Two, three or more colours on the same screen will mutually relate less relatively, as will the same colours in a print. When we then compare screen and print, we are more willing to accept the divagations because we compensate by aligning the colours in our perception.

We can all agree that the logo on the paper is red, and the logo on the screen is red. But their equivalence is relatively and can not be measured physically; we only have our personal impression to relay on. And you know how it is with personal impression.

I would suggest the people from i.e. Pantone, to come up with some sort of colour sceme that handles the colours in comparable blocks, instead of just one-to-one. This would enable us to consider and compare screen and print colours in relation to a "safe" palette, and not to a single, variable colour. Thus redusing frustration and confusion.

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