Two different jobs get called the same thing. Making a design look as good as it can is one job. Making a specific brand color come out right is another, and it has a different answer. The table below is the short version of both.
Find your row. The rest of the page is why.
| If this is you | Do this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| I just want it to look great | Upload the RGB file exactly as it is. Change nothing. | RGB holds values that are outside what any ink can print, and our press profile converts from there at print time. Converting first throws away headroom we could have used. |
| This is a brand color and it has to be right | In Illustrator or CorelDRAW, make that one color a named spot swatch from the Pantone color book, apply it, and send the .AI or PDF. The document itself can stay RGB. | A named spot travels through our whole chain by name, and the press matches the name against its own color book instead of converting a number. This is the pro move, and it costs you nothing else about your file. |
| I have a hex from the brand guide and no Pantone | Upload, then tell us the hex through Help me with my art. | A hex is already somebody's conversion. Naming the target lets a person set it deliberately rather than read it back out of your pixels. |
| I work in CMYK and my file is already CMYK | Send it as it is. Do not re-convert it. | Your values are honored as they are. Worth knowing: a file that already states its colors in print terms skips the color score, because it has already answered the question the score asks. |
| It is a screenshot, or it came from an AI image tool | Upload it, read the resolution warning before the color one, and expect good-looking color rather than brand-exact color. | Every raster file is RGB, and that one has usually been converted and compressed at least once already. Resolution is the first problem in that file; color is the second. |
| The studio flagged one of my colors | Open the overlay before you change anything. | The score is an average weighted by area, so a vivid accent can be flagged and barely move the number. What matters is whether the flagged color is anywhere you care about. |
| It is a neon, a fluorescent, or a metallic | Decide now whether the closest printable version is acceptable, or talk to us before you order. | These need a different colorant, not a wider gamut. No file change and no press setting reaches them. |
| Royal blue, cobalt, deep purple | Expect some movement, and say so if it is brand-critical. | Blue-violet is the weakest region of four-color process and the one our expanders do not cover. |
The advice you will hear is “design in RGB for vibrance, CMYK for accuracy”. There is something real in it and something wrong with it, and the difference matters because following the wrong half costs you color you cannot get back.
An RGB file can describe colors that no ink can print. That sounds like a problem and is actually headroom: it means the conversion to ink happens once, at print time, with the profile that matches our press, and it starts from everything you had. A file already converted to CMYK has been clipped to fit a gamut, and whatever was clipped off is gone.
Converting to CMYK yourself does not make a file print-ready. Your software converts using a generic press profile — usually an offset one — which is not our press and is narrower than our ink set. You have not made the file more accurate. You have answered the question early, with the wrong answer, and thrown away the headroom at the same time.
What actually decides whether a color comes out right is not which color space the file is in. It is, in order: whether the color is inside what the press can reach at the lightness it needs; whether anybody stated the target at all; how many times the file has been converted on its way to us; what it is being printed on; and what you are comparing the result against. Color space is downstream of the middle two, which is why the accurate move and the vibrant move are not actually in conflict.
If you already work in CMYK, keep your values and send them as they are. They are honored. If you work in RGB, stay there. The one thing nobody should do is convert a working file to be helpful. Common file issues covers what we do with each color mode on arrival.
Here is the part that does not get explained often enough. Accuracy does not come from the color mode. It comes from naming the color instead of describing it with numbers that have to be converted.
In a vector file you can mark one color as a named spot — a Pantone from the color book — and that name travels through our whole chain untouched. The press looks the name up in its own color book and prints the recipe it holds for that color, which can use every ink on the machine. Nothing about the number in your file is converted, because the number is not what we used.
The best part for a designer: the rest of the document can stay in RGB. You keep the working file you want and the brand color still gets the accurate route. That is the move.
Window → Swatch Libraries → Color Books → PANTONE+ Solid Coated, then pick your color there. Typing a Pantone name onto a process swatch produces a process color with a name-shaped label and nothing to match.
Swatch Options should say Color Type: Spot Color, and the Swatches panel marks spots with a small dot in the corner. If it does not, it is process.
Edit → Edit Colors → Recolor Artwork is the tool for mapping colors already in the design onto the spot swatch, rather than hunting objects by hand.
Use the name as the color book gives it. A swatch you named yourself is a color our press book will not contain, and an unmatched name is resolved in a way nobody controls.
Any of those converts the spot to process and the name is gone. Exporting a PNG of the artwork does the same thing.
File → Package will tell you what is linked. Save .AI or PDF, one artboard, and delete hidden layers before you do.
Typing a Pantone name onto an ordinary swatch does not make it a spot color. It makes a process color with a name-shaped label, and there is nothing for the press to match. Take the color from the color book itself, and check that the swatch says Spot Color before you save.
Before changing anything, open the overlay and look at where the flagged color actually sits. The score is weighted by how much of the design is affected, so a vivid accent can be flagged and hardly matter, while the same color across a chest print matters a great deal. Most flags need no action.
When one does, reduce intensity in small steps and leave the hue where it is. A color that comes out slightly less vivid than intended reads as a print; a color whose hue has rotated reads as a mistake. For a bright light color — a lime, a vivid yellow — lowering lightness a little usually costs less than desaturating, because the ink version of that hue is darker than the screen version to begin with.
In Illustrator, Recolor Artwork is the right tool for swapping an exact color everywhere it appears, including onto a spot swatch. In Photoshop, use Hue/Saturation on the specific hue range rather than the master channel, and read the result rather than trusting the preview. And one option nobody considers: change how much of the design depends on the color. A difficult blue in a thin outline is fine. The same blue filling half the art is not.
Our art team can swap a named color to a named target, free, through Help me with my art. What we will not do is invent your brand color — if accuracy matters, the target has to come from you, as a Pantone name or a hex. And we do not convert a file's color mode, because the press profile handles that at print time and doing it early is the mistake this page is about.
Help me with my art: how a request works explains how to ask and what happens next.
Three things get asked for that no file change and no press setting delivers. Knowing which bucket you are in before you order is worth more than any amount of adjustment afterwards.
A fluorescent colorant absorbs light you cannot see and gives it back as light you can, so it reflects more than it receives. No mixture of ordinary inks does that at any channel count. It needs fluorescent ink, which is a different inkset.
The effect is specular — it depends on light bouncing off a metal surface at an angle. That needs a metallic colorant or a foil process, not more color.
A neon on a monitor is a bright value sitting next to a dark interface, lit from behind. Half of what you like about it is the backlight and the surround. Nothing on a shirt sits next to a black backlit field.
The deep blue-violet region is a fourth case, and a softer one: it is reachable, but it is the weakest part of four-color printing and the one place our expander inks do not cover. What expanded gamut is, and why it matters for DTF has the diagram that shows why.
More color complaints come from how a print was looked at than from how it was printed. These are free to fix.
Judge the transfer after it is pressed and cooled, on the actual garment — not on the film, and not while it is warm.
Never judge a print against a monitor. One emits light and the other reflects it; the shirt cannot win that comparison.
Pick one light and always use it. A match under shop LEDs can miss under daylight, and that is a property of the inks, not a mistake.
If a brand color matters, approve against a printed reference rather than a screen.
Judge at the size you will sell. Apparent intensity changes with area and with whatever surrounds it.
And the file-handling habits that cost color before anything reaches a press:
Do not pull a logo off a website or a slide deck and expect the brand color. That file is screen-resolution and has already been converted at least once.
Do not convert to CMYK to be helpful. Your software uses a generic press profile that is not ours, and the clipping cannot be undone.
Do not round-trip between RGB and CMYK. Every pass clips, and clipping is one-way.
A hex from a brand website is somebody's conversion of the brand color, not the brand color. If there is a Pantone, use the Pantone.
Delete hidden layers before you send a vector file. A hidden layer is still in the file.
Send one source per logo. The same mark sent as a PNG on one line and an .AI on another will not land on the same color.
No. Converting in your own software applies a generic press profile rather than ours, which clips colors we could have printed, and the clipping cannot be undone. Send RGB and let the conversion happen once, at print time, with the profile that matches the press.
Name it. Make that color a spot swatch from the Pantone color book in a vector file and the press matches it by name against its own book instead of converting a number. The rest of your document can stay RGB.
Not especially — it is RGB like every other raster file, and it will print the way any RGB file prints. Check its resolution first, because that is the more common problem with generated images, and expect good-looking color rather than brand-exact color.
Usually not. Open the overlay and look at where the flagged color actually is: the score is weighted by how much of the design is affected, so a small vivid accent can be flagged without mattering. Change it when the flagged color is the one the design depends on.
Reduce its saturation in small steps and leave its hue alone, because a hue shift reads worse than a slight loss of intensity. For a bright light color such as a lime or a vivid yellow, lowering lightness slightly usually costs less than desaturating it.
Our press uses a Pantone library to produce the closest recipe it can reach for a named spot color, which is the best available route. Fluorescent and metallic Pantones are categorically out of reach, and the reflex blue family sits in our weakest region, so tell us up front when one of those is brand-critical.
Upload the design and the studio marks which colors will move, on your own artwork, before you order.
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