What decides the verdict?

A margin test on the colour's channels: each has to sit between five and two hundred and fifty. Push any channel beyond that and the colour is flagged as likely to shift.

Is this a soft proof?

No. There is no preview of the printed result, no print standard and no ink or stock selection — the figures are an arithmetic conversion, not a colour-managed separation.

Which colours get flagged most?

Near-blacks, near-whites and fully saturated hues, because those are the values that push a channel to the ends of the range where a four-ink process struggles.

Does a pass mean the printed colour will match?

No. A pass says the channels are comfortably inside the range, which makes a shift less likely. Only a proof against the real press, ink and stock settles the question.

Can it predict how the ink will actually look on paper?

No. The verdict is a fixed margin rule around an arithmetic CMYK conversion rather than a profile-based separation: there is no paper preview, no soft proof, no rendering intent and no ink-limit modelling, so the reading is early triage rather than a press-accurate proof.

Print Color Accuracy Checker

Color

#3B82F6

Print check

CMYK approximation

C76 M47 Y0 K4

Likely prints close to screen

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The print color accuracy checker converts a colour to CMYK and reports whether its channels sit far enough from the ends of the range to survive being printed.

What is Print Color Accuracy Checker?

One colour field feeds the page, and the result is a card with three lines: the CMYK approximation of the colour, a label saying what it represents, and a verdict. The verdict is either Likely prints close to screen in green or May shift in print in orange, decided by a margin test on the colour's own channels rather than by a profile.

The test is simple and worth knowing exactly, because it explains both the verdicts and their limits.
Each of the red, green and blue values is checked for sitting between five and two hundred and fifty.
A colour well inside that band passes; a colour that pushes any channel below five or above two hundred and fifty is flagged, because those are the values a four-ink process handles worst — near-black shadows, near-white highlights and fully saturated hues all land there.

The CMYK figures above the verdict are an arithmetic conversion rather than a separation, so they describe the colour as ink percentages instead of predicting what a press will do with it. A colour reported as likely to print close to screen is one whose channels are comfortably inside the range; it is not a proof, and a real proof needs the ink, the stock and the press.

The practical use is early triage. Choosing between two candidates for a brand colour, a packaging tone or a printed accent is faster when one of them is flagged before artwork is produced. It is also a quick way to see why very saturated colours and very dark ones are the two groups that shift most often: both sit at the extremes the margin test is looking for.

What the page will not do is model the shift. There is no preview of the paper result, no soft proof, no selection of a print standard and no indication of how far a flagged colour will move — a colour just outside the band and one far outside it receive the same sentence.

Using it as a first pass is straightforward: run the two or three candidates for a printed colour through the page and compare the verdicts. One that clears the margins and one that does not is a decision made early and for free, and the ink figures printed above the verdict give a rough sense of which channels the colour leans on. What a print color accuracy checker cannot do is promise a match, so the reading is best treated as a filter deciding which colours are worth a proof rather than as an answer in itself.

Limits: one colour at a time, a fixed margin rule rather than a profile, an arithmetic CMYK approximation, and no rendering intent, stock or ink selection.
As a screen to print color check it answers will my color print correctly with a caveat rather than a verdict — the honest reading of a cmyk color shift warning is that the colour is in the group most likely to move, so treat the print safe colors question as a first filter and confirm with a proof.

How to use Print Color Accuracy Checker

Pick the colour that is heading for print.
Read the CMYK approximation and the verdict line beneath it.
Treat the orange verdict as a prompt to test a proof rather than as a prediction of how far the colour will move.

When to use Print Color Accuracy Checker vs related tools

Use this when a screen colour is being considered for print and you want an early warning before artwork is produced. Use the gamut page when the ink approximation itself is the question, or a profile-based tool when the conversion has to be relied on. The gamut checker covers the same CMYK approximation from the gamut side, and the CMYK channel mixer works the ink channels directly.

Privacy & Security

This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.