I had a very disappointing experience yesterday. I made a lovely graduation card for my son's girlfriend. She loves the beach, so I used a digital scrap kit with papers in shades of sea green and beach glass, and shells ranging from white to beige. I was so pleased, as the final product had an overall aqua/white appearance, just what I had pictured in my mind. However, when I printed it out, my shades of aqua were instead a weird shade of green and the shells were a mossy tan.
I use PrintMaster and have never had a problem with colours before, but this is a new laptop, a new version of PM as the old version would not work with the new laptop, and I was using my son's new printer as mine had died. Too many changes to try to isolate what might have happened.
I know that for the most part, scrap kits are intended for digital use. I have read that some people do print and wondered if this was a common problem when printing?
There are several stuff that may be happening here to drop your colors off.
There are colors that look awesome on screen but the printers can´t reach them. They are called "out of gamut" colors. Tcehnically, a digiscrap experienced designer usually checks their pieces for gamut and fixes it if the differences are expressive. However, not all softwares have a gamut checking and fixing option, so it may sometimes not happen.
Other problem I experienced in the past was creating a cmyk (the color mode for printing) on photoshop and tried to print on one of these instant photo printing machines. It was a disaster: They are set for rgb, which are the color settings for screen, that digital cameras use, and they have their own correction. I went back to my photoshop and converted all the stuff to rgb, and it worked well on the same machine.
There are other issues that may be happening: for example, you screen is not calibrated, the software you are using is dropping your colors off, etc. anyway, I know how those experiences can be frustrating and feel sorry for you
Wow! Thanks, Lórien... I think I really take colour for granted and do not really appreciate how complex it is. Maybe I will need to save this kit (and any others that do this) for designing images with quotes for my facebook page. Hopefully it is just the kit just has gamut issues, and it is not one of the other issues you listed!
Color is never granted, unless you are printing something through some kind of very expensive process, and have a pre-press person and some pantone numbers to follow. These days I work with printing products for small business, and sometimes sending the same product to the same place to print can have two different results. Sometimes slightly different, but still different... Plus different materials print differently on the same printer because they absorb ink differently and so on...
So, this is not just an issue for scrapping by printing digital layouts at home. I had not realized that that issues might occur even by taking files to be printed. I had toyed with the idea of paying for printing if that would guarantee success since I really love this kit. I guess I should make up a contact sheet with reduced-sized samples from this kit and others, and then take it to be printed at a copy shop to see if their printer "sees" my colours before spending time and money using this kit for printing. Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
I have had similar issues myself. It's rarely a gamut issue for me. Honestly if the program you are using and the printer are not calibrated together colors are going to be off. I think my head was spinning to try and do this so I gave up with the technical side of it. My fix is I do a test print and if I don't like the colors I just adjust them manually with an adjustment layer...so if they look too yellow I add more blue, if too dark I just lighten, things like that. Usually I get it much closer to what I saw on screen when I do that. Then I'm happy
Thanks, Jessica. My PrintMaster is very basic, compared to what y'all use. I can layer things, just not as you do. My layers have to have some transparency and even then, they just lay on top or underneath. But I might be able to tweak the colours a bit and see if that helps. If nothing else, I know it works on backgrounds that have few colours. Unfortunately, when I have tried to recolour an object, all parts of the object are recoloured that colour. Oh, well!
If I ever do actual scrapping with photos I will have to get a better program, but PM works fine for cards, etc.
Did you check the obvious? Are the inks full in your printer?
That's funny, LilyAnn... first thing I checked!
Seriously, though, often the simplest cause is often overlooked. Several years ago, we were about 80 miles from home at a homeschooling conference. About half-way home, our car died. We were grateful that we had pulled off on an exit when the car started "coughing" and we were able to coast into a gas station parking lot. We called our local mechanic and he sent a tow truck to take the car to his shop. My sister and her husband came to pick us up and bring us home. The next day, our mechanic called me. "Hon, I just don't feel right charging you for this." I was confused, as he sounded like he was choking back laughter. It turned out we had run out of gas! In a gas station parking lot! (To our credit, the gas gauge had issues, but still you would have thought we would have tried filling the tank before calling the tow!) So, yes, I am learning to check the simple causes first now... 
Funny story here too. I took my kids to a bowling birthday party. We had fun! When it was time to go, I couldn't find my keys. We checked the whole bowling alley and had the owner make an announcement looking for the keys. I stayed inside the bowling alley for a good 45 minutes looking for the keys. I decided to go outside to get some air because I was so upset. I get to the car and it was running!!!! I left the car running while I was in the bowling alley the whole 2 plus hours and the car was still there when I came out. Thank goodness. There was never an announcement at the bowling alley asking for the owner of the car.
It is the simply answers that we sometimes overlook. But it couldn't hurt to mention!
Did you find the problem?
No, LilyAnn, but I at least know it is not the printer ink being out! I think what I will do is try a sample print before using a kit and see what might need tweaking. If it is too "off," I will just use it for online imaging.....
You might try putting your file on a thumb drive and taking it to Office Max to get printed. I do this when I want to print something on special paper or photo paper or for crafting purposes.
Thanks, Vivienne... I might do that soon!
Does your laptop have settings to adjust your screen colors? It should, though it's often Fn+some other key.
I've found that adjusting it using the images on this site gives me pretty close results to what I expect from the printer, though it can take a while to get it adjusted right the first time, especially if the screen is significantly out of calibration.
Thanks, Holly... I will see if I can figure that out. I am rather "tech un-savvy" but I am willing to learn!
There are easier ways, but they usually involve purchasing a (or borrowing someone's) color calibration tool, which START at about $80 and go up from there. It's a hefty investment that many of us don't have the budget for, which is why I always suggest the monitor calibration image series instead--free is within almost everyone's budget!
While color calibration is a complicated subject, the descriptions there explain really well what you're aiming to get your screen adjusted to, including a picture of what you want it to look like. If you can figure out the adjustments, it'll get you close enough so you have a good idea what color you'll get when it's printed.
The paper on which you print can also affect the results (but that's another, long & complicated topic); photo paper usually gives me the best results but if I need to print on regular paper, say for making a card, I make sure to use a slightly heavy, bright white paper.
All that being said, I no longer print anything myself, since my printer died.