Every print from every printer differs from the screen it was chosen on. It is not a fault and it cannot be eliminated, and knowing why it happens tells you which two things are worth doing about it.
A screen emits light. Paper reflects it.
That is the entire cause.
A phone screen is a light source. It generates colour by emitting red, green and blue light directly at your eye, at whatever brightness you have it set to, in a dark room if you like.
A printed page has no light of its own. It reflects whatever light is in the room, minus whatever the ink absorbs. Its brightest possible white is the paper, and its darkest black is as dark as ink gets.
A screen can be brighter than paper and darker than paper. Every difference below follows from that one fact.
What shifts, and by how much
| On screen | On paper | |
|---|---|---|
| Deep blues | Vivid, luminous | Slightly duller |
| Bright saturated greens | Electric | Noticeably calmer |
| Neon and fluorescent colours | Glow | Cannot be reproduced |
| Blacks | Very dark, especially on OLED | Dark, but lifted |
| Whites | Bright, backlit | The paper |
| Dark photographs overall | Readable | Darker |
The largest and most surprising is the last row. A moody, low-light photograph looks rich on a backlit screen and can arrive close to black on paper — because the screen was supplying the light and the paper is not.
The two things worth doing
1. Brighten dark photographs before sending.
The single most effective step, and it costs nothing. If a photograph is dark, lift it — it will look slightly washed out on your screen and roughly right on paper.
2. Judge photographs at low screen brightness, in a lit room.
Turn the brightness down and look at them in daylight. That is much closer to the printed result than a phone at full brightness at night.
What is not worth doing
Do not try to colour-manage it yourself. Converting files, applying profiles or “preparing for CMYK” causes more problems than it solves for a customer, and files sent to us are handled as part of the design work.
Do not judge from a photograph of a print. A photograph of a printed page, taken on a phone, is a screen showing a photograph of paper — two conversions away from either thing.
What a proof does and does not do
For a designed product you approve a digital proof of every page before it prints. That is a real check and it catches layout, order, captions, crops and anything too small to print.
⚠️ It cannot show you the colour, because you are looking at it on a screen. Nothing sent to a screen can show you what paper will do. The design proof →
Black and white, which behaves differently
The one case where paper is not at a disadvantage: with no colours to reproduce, the whole problem disappears. A black-and-white photograph frequently prints closer to what you saw than a colour one does — which makes conversion a real tool for mixed light and old scans.
Frequently asked
Why do printed photos look different from my screen? A screen emits light and paper reflects it. A screen can be brighter and darker than paper can, so some colours cannot be matched.
Why did my prints come out darker? Because your screen was supplying the light. Brighten dark photographs before sending them.
Which colours change most? Bright saturated greens and blues, and anything neon — which cannot be reproduced in ink at all.
Should I convert my photos to CMYK? No. Send the originals; conversion causes more problems than it solves.
Does the proof show me the colours? No. The proof is on a screen, so it shows layout, order and crops — not what paper will do.
Part of our guide to paper and printing. See also: skin tones in print and why indoor photographs print orange.
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