Why your catalogue coral is not the coral on the rack

Every label we work with has one colour that never reproduces. It is usually a coral, a teal or a mustard, and the returns data usually knows about it before anyone in the studio does.

Where the colour goes wrong

Three places, in order of how often we see them. The light source has poor colour rendering, so the fabric is already lying before it reaches the sensor. The grade is done against a preset rather than a reference, so a pleasing image wins over an accurate one. And the file goes out in a colour space the shopping platform then re-interprets.

Shoot with the swatch in frame

The simplest fix costs nothing: put a physical swatch of the fabric in the first frame of every look, alongside a colour checker. Then the grade has a reference that is not a memory of the garment.

Grading to a preset makes the picture look good. Grading to the swatch makes the parcel match the picture.

The checklist we run

• High-CRI sources only, measured, not assumed
• Colour checker and fabric swatch in the first frame of each look
• Tethered capture so the art director sees the real file, not a camera JPEG
• Grade against the swatch taped beside the monitor
• Export in sRGB for the platform, with a wide-gamut master kept for print

On a forty-two piece resort catalogue we shot this way last season, colour-related returns fell by roughly a third. That is a better argument for the extra fifteen minutes per look than anything about craft.