Why screen and print colors look different
Monitors add red, green, and blue light to create color, while print layers cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink to absorb light instead. Because the two methods have different color gamuts, a vivid, almost neon color that pops on screen can come out noticeably duller on paper. Highly saturated blues, greens, and magentas tend to show the biggest gap.
Enter a screen color code and this tool converts it to CMYK, applies an approximate ink-behavior model to estimate the printed result, and calculates the percentage difference from the original as a shift score. Actual print output still depends on your printer, paper, and the print shop's color profile, so treat this as an early sanity check and confirm anything important with a real printed proof.
Frequently Asked Questions
Screens add light using RGB while print layers ink using CMYK, so the two have different color gamuts — the gap shows up most in highly saturated colors.
Very saturated near-neon colors, and bright cyan or magenta shades, tend to fall outside the CMYK gamut and shift the most.