Yes, I've been whining about this for a while. The Zazzle invitation mockups are several shades lighter than the actual color. I'm not sure if that was an attempt to give the user a sense of what the image might look like on paper or what - since inevitably there will be some color differences once printed. But the contrast between the actual color and the mockup color is quite striking especially on designs with dark background colors. The same difference is apparent if you download the artwork vs. the mockup. The downloaded artwork reflects the actual chosen color while the mockup is a few shades lighter. I even made a little chart with colors sampled from a number of my designs to demonstrate the difference.
I'm really not sure exactly what to think about it. I mean, if the colors are going to print lighter then we probably should be showing the customer the lighter color... of course, if they're downloading it to use digitally then they'd want to see the screen color. You can actually see the differences on the mockups that have the image on a phone next to the printed image. The image of the invitation on the phone shows the actual color, while the image representing the printed version shows the lightened color.
Well anyhow, it's a conundrum. The new foil and print cards seem to display the artwork at the chosen colors rather than a few shades lighter. Maybe they hired a new person in the art department who didn't adopt the practice of lightening the mockup colors? Who knows.
Well anyway... sorry to write a novel on this topic but it's a bit of a pet peeve for me, and I'm really not sure of the best way to proceed so that the customer knows exactly what they're getting where colors are concerned.
Just to follow up on this old thread - I was recently contacted by Zazzle's Quality control team to inform me that the navy blue color I'd been using was too dark and was printing as black. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it because I'd only ever gotten 5 star reviews on products using that color - some even mentioned how great the color was, and some took pictures of the products which were clearly blue and not black. Hmmm...
Well anyhow, I communicated with someone on the team who checked with the printers and was informed that they couldn't accurately reproduce that dark of a color, so I needed to change all of my navy blue products to a lighter and less saturated shade. He said the darkest navy blue they could accurately reproduce was #1d194c
Anyhow, I told the guy about my confusion, and explained that at least part of the reason I'd chosen such a dark shade was because I thought the previews meant that it would print lighter. He said no, that it was an issue with the previews - that the color matching print issue was especially problematic with dark blues and purples, and that they were working on fixing the preview issue.
Soooo... take that for what you will. I'm not sure if something changed in the print process or what, but I think it means that the design color is more accurate than the preview color.
Hope that's helpful to somebody out there.
