**Why Your Teal Color Isn't Quite Right: Troubleshooting Tips**

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Achieving the perfect teal color in DTF or any CMYK base printing can sometimes be a challenge. Teal is a combination of **cyan and yellow**, and getting the balance right between these two colors is crucial to produce that vibrant, accurate shade. If you're struggling with your teal prints, here’s what you need to know.

**1. Start with a Nozzle Check**

Before diving into color correction, always run a **nozzle check**. This will help you ensure that your printer's yellow and cyan nozzles are firing correctly.

- **Cyan**: The lines should be clean, continuous, and without breaks.

- **Yellow**: The yellow lines should look equally consistent, with no gaps.

If the nozzle check reveals gaps or missing lines, particularly in cyan or yellow, you’ll need to clean the printhead to fix the issue before troubleshooting further.

**2. Balancing Cyan and Yellow for Teal**

When the nozzle check looks good, but your teal color still appears off, it's likely an issue with the balance of cyan and yellow ink. **Teal is created by mixing more cyan than yellow**, but if you see too much cyan in the print and not enough yellow, your teal will skew toward blue.

**What to check:**

- If your teal is looking **too blue**, it means you're likely printing with **too much cyan and not enough yellow**.

- Conversely, if the teal looks **too green**, you might be overloading on yellow.

Adjusting the ink saturation in your RIP software can help control this. Be sure to inspect the ICC profile settings as well, ensuring they are correctly configured for optimal color balance.

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