CMYK + RGB

[Rosejan]

My inquiry is as follows: When designing a paper-printed product using Zazzle's design tool, if we place a background with a CMYK color mode on one of its layers (because prints always look better with this color mode), and on other upper layers we add transparent .png files (RGB), what prevails at the time of printing? CMYK mode or RGB? Thank you for your responses.

[Cat]

Zazzle recommends using RGB over CMYK. It's about half way down on this page but they don't give any details Creating and Uploading Images to Zazzle – Zazzle Help Center

[idraw]

My previous reply about color profiles and what to use:

On 12-09-2022 04:26 PM I wrote:

Working from memory about a very old post in the old )gone) forum, a Mod stated that Zazzle converts the image to their inhouse profile printing format. So you don't have to do anything other than save your file as rgb and upload it, Zazzle will handle it from there, and will let you know if there is ever a problem, theoretically.
Further, RGB has a much larger color "window" than CMYK, in cmyk some of the colors, such as teal, lose their vibrancy.
Zazzle's conversion handles things well,using RGB. Best to let the Mods chime in with specific answers. (probably too late today for Mods to reply, won't happen till Monday,) I have been using the Adobe RGB profile in Photoshop for many years, earller at Cafe"extremely"Pressed and now other PDDs, along with Z, still using with no problems on my  Mac. For many years before that (1994) I used BruceRGB, which was a beautiful profile.

Zazzle Help Center > Orders > Design Tips  DESKTOP MOBILE Suggested Color Profiles We recommend using an RGB color profile for images; however, we also support CMYK based images. A Note About Using Images with the Color White In an image, there are areas that you may want to be transparent (i.e. the area or background behind it shows through) or areas that you may want to be non-transparent.

[PenguinPower]

All printing is done in CMYK. Light mixes in RGB, ink mixes in CMYK.  See my post near the bottom of the page at the link below for an explanation of why/when you might work in CMYK and why/when you probably should leave your artwork in RGB.

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/create-products/out-of-web-color-warning-help-for-a-color-ignorant-d... 

[idraw · Accepted solution]

from a previous post/ discussion:
Z Recommends Adobe RGB or S-RGB …. should be sufficient.

Suggestion—since z recommends RGB, work in that profile and let z convert the image when they print.

[Rosejan]

Thank you very much for your responses 🤗