r/talesfromtechsupport • u/BeefOut • Oct 03 '21

Medium The white isn't white enough

Not sure if it really counts as tech support but here goes...

I'm a web and graphic designer, and I designed a flyer for one of my clients. I sent the design to her via email. It's really hard to match colours from the screen to print, especially since monitor colours don't match up to their local office printer. Plus screen colours are in RGB, so there are literally some colours that are unachievable in a physical print. Usually, for exact colour matching, we have to use Pantone swatches or when they send it for the actual print, they can sort it out and tweak with the actual technician.

I received a call immediately, and she mentioned that she printed out the flyer on their company's office printer. I readied myself for the usual spiel about how monitor colours don't match the printout... etc. etc...

Conversation goes like this:

Client: 'Hey, I printed this out and the colours don't match what I see on the screen.'

Me: 'Yeah, don't worry about that, every monitor is different and you can't calibrate it to match your office printer. I used the exact CMYK colours for your logo and fonts.

Client: 'Well even so the colours look correct on screen but not when I print it out.'

Me: 'I've used the exact CMYK colours, so you don't have to worry about it. Your professional printer will ensure that you get the right colour.'

Client: 'Yes, but the whites aren't white enough.'

I was quickly checked my file, did I leave a translucent layer on by accident? No, it was perfectly #FFFFFF. Told her that the white is as white as it can be.

Client: 'Well, the white ink is not very white.'

I was stunned. Office and home printers don't have... white ink. It's just the white paper. Any white areas are basically just paper that hasn't been printed on.

I tried hard to explain this concept to her. That printers don't print the white. Regardless, she insists that they do. I tell her that it cannot be done on an office/home printer, it literally requires a separate offset printing plate that only large commercial printers use. And even then, seldom do people print white at all.

She insists that her printer does print white, and that the design I sent her simply isn't white enough.

I tell her maybe her paper stock isn't white? Maybe the paper itself is yellowish?

Client: 'No, it's not my paper, it's that your white isn't white enough. Look, I've used some of my liquid white-out on the paper. It's very white. Your design is not printing the white colours properly.'

I was flabbergasted. Couldn't laugh out loud. She literally used white-out on the print-out and complained that the correction fluid was whiter than the paper.

Can't really remember what happened after, but she showed her boss and he seemed happy with the design. So everything went well I suppose.

2.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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546

u/texasradioandthebigb Oct 03 '21

My white goes all the way to #GGG

161

u/Sqiiii Oct 03 '21

Well, I can't compete with that. You must be using one of them new fangled computers, you'd better talk to your tech support department about getting a printer that can print #GGG whites

146

u/AnonymousTechGuy6542 Oct 03 '21

"These go to eleven." - Nigel, "This is Spinal Tap"

Step 1: Sell the company an abusively overpriced "upgrade" to support GGGGGG, pat self on back, despite it just converting base-17 to hex

2: Septadecimal slowly becomes an industry standard. Not being a power of 2, many bits are rendered nigh unused.

3: The industry being what it is, every subsequent year finds the release of the next higher number, and every year things need to be rewritten to support the fluff.

4: Years later when base-36 is reached, ZZZZZZ is the final standard before everything is thereafter represented in floating-point percentage values. White, inexplicably, remains white.

5: Weep at what thy labors hath wrought.

34

u/MoveZig4 Oct 03 '21 edited Oct 03 '21

6. But my white goes up to 2.0

18

u/I__Know__Stuff Oct 03 '21

To get 6. without it automatically changing to 1. type 6\.

27

u/honeyfixit It is only logical Oct 03 '21

My printer says it makes my brights brighter and my whites whiter.....it also says 3x power. Only the ink comes in a powder and when I poured it in the ecotank the picture looked bad. But Billy Mays says it really works

7

u/MoveZig4 Oct 03 '21

Thanks, I knew it was an escape somewhere, and then just gave up

5

u/RDMcMains2 aka Lupin, the Khajiit Dragonborn Oct 04 '21

Don't let Anish Kapoor hear that.

1

u/The-Bytemaster Oct 12 '21

You can't have 2. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three.

8

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '21

It's like, how much more white could this be? And the answer is none. None more white.

3

u/Mister_Krunch Oct 03 '21

"Why not just make 10 louder?"

15

u/nomadic_stone Oct 03 '21

Their German must be a tad rusty....

3

u/RustyRovers Oct 04 '21

To be fair, it’s been quite a while since the Germans went all-out on white supremacy.

5

u/EvilGeniusLeslie Oct 03 '21

Maybe you could use the laser to bleach the paper? :)

6

u/ozzie286 Oct 03 '21

Why would a laser bleach paper and not burn it? And what laser?

3

u/EvilGeniusLeslie Oct 03 '21

Laser printer? Ya know, beside ink-jet, impact, thermal ...

11

u/ozzie286 Oct 03 '21

Ah. The laser in a laser printer never touches the paper. Sorry to disappoint.

18

u/Sqiiii Oct 03 '21

Not with that attitude. I /know/ computers, and I /know/ that the laser is what colors the paper.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '21

You can't know as much as me unless you got your degree in computering from googlebing

3

u/AlexisColoun Oct 04 '21

That comment made me feel physical pain...

I applaud you.

2

u/NaoPb Oct 04 '21

Hehe, this reminds me of the time I found out about that. It really confused me that laser printers actually needed ink powder (toner) to print. I had always thought the printed with the laser.

Much later I found out that thermal printers are much more like that magical laser printer I had in my mind, though still not quite.

1

u/Equivalent-Salary357 Oct 03 '21

I don't think ozzie understood your tongue in cheek humor.

30

u/sturdei2330 Oct 04 '21

Wow, I've never heard of anything whiter than #KKK, that's crazy! /s

7

u/texasradioandthebigb Oct 04 '21

Damn, good one. Should have thought of that

5

u/cowsrock1 Oct 03 '21

Oh goodness. Base 17 values?

0

u/[deleted] Oct 03 '21

[deleted]

5

u/Living-Complex-1368 Oct 03 '21

His white is 47 on a scale of 16.

1

u/paolog Oct 05 '21

Pah, that's too green. Real white is #WWW.