Discrepancy in Printed Reports in ArcGIS Insights

[RamaRaomalisetti]

I'm currently encountering an issue related to the colors in my published reports. Specifically, when I attempt to print a report using the report viewer, the colors are not coming out as expected. (when users try to print reports using their browser's print functionality,) the colors in the printed version are also different from what is displayed on the screen. 

Report viewer should be Print enable 

[Ian_Muehlenhaus]

Dear @RamaRaomalisetti ,

Great question! There are two potential reasons you are seeing a difference in color between the black-background interactive report and the white background printed report. 

The first would be an RGB to CMYK color model conversion. This happens when colors in RGB (monitor mode) are not reproducible in CMYK mode (pigment).

I have great news: this isn't the issue here. So there is no technical issue. 🙂

Unfortunately, the problem is the human brain! 😮

Human vision is a hallucinatory experience created entirely by our brain. Data is retrieved from the retina and our brain interprets the massive amounts of photon data coming in to create objects. 

The human brain has evolved to create shortcuts – basically, it no longer interprets all data coming in, but rather fills in the gaps and makes stuff up. (In fact, we all have a permanent blind spot in our vision (even when facing forward) that is automatically filled in with made up data constantly. We'll never know that we're blind, because we can't see it. Quite neat!)

Where am I going with this?

Well, these colors are indeed exactly the same. They look totally different, even to me. They do to all humans – likely – because our brains are wired to see the colors differently. They are not. Our vision is lying to us. 

It's called simultaneous contrast and occurs often when the contrast in a background color varies significantly from one image to the next. Your background colors are black and white. So some of these bluish colors look completely different on both of them.  

I cut and pasted from your black background and white background charts, removed the backgrounds, and put them together to highlight this point. These colors are exactly the same! 

So we have to blame our genetics and brains for lying to us. And it's a good reminder not to believe everything we see, because everything we see (and hear, taste, touch) is 100% invented/hallucinated by our brain based on limited perceptors (rods and cones in the eye), brain bandwidth, and the quality of the data coming to us! (Freaky, I know! 🙂 

[Ian_Muehlenhaus]

Another way you can test this is to install a color identifying plugin in your browser and mouse over the colors. I forget the names of these plugins but there are a bunch that allow you to identify the color of a pixel in the browser with your mouse. It's pretty fun and a great way to find new colors to use in your ArcGIS Insights projects! 🙂

Thanks again for the question. Everyone gets burned by simultaneous contrast, so don't feel bad. It still happens to me all the time, and I've read books on it! Hopefully your question helps the next person that runs into it when they come to the Esri Community. So thank you for posting and thank you for using ArcGIS Insights!

Best,

Ian

[RamaRaomalisetti]

 HI Ian_Muehlenhaus 

Sorry May be i am not mentioned it clearly, My agenda is the color between card background in the report and printed preview in the browser is different, in my snapshot card background color is black and chrome browser report color is white and also background banner is black color also not came.

[AkshayHarshe]

What deployment (enterprise/desktop/online) & version of ArcGIS Insights are you using? Have you had a chance to use the report designer that was introduced in 2023.1?

If you are using ArcGIS Insights in online you should already have access to that using 

this button.

[RamaRaomalisetti]

 HI AkshayHarshe ,

I have Designed the Report using the Report designer and published. After published who will  view the report, the person want to print the report by browser the colors are varying whatever we seen in the browser and print.

I hope you are understand my issue.  

[AkshayHarshe]

I see what you mean. Currently, the report designer functionality is only available for the editors of the workbook. You can download the report here and share it separately. 

Unfortunately, the report designer functionality is not at a stage where the viewer of the report can download the report. We have noted this enhancement and is under consideration. 

Printing through browsers has limitations and not all the graphics come through which is why we built a report designer with a module that can render the app's graphics properly.

If you still wish to use this the way you are doing now. I would recommend keeping the colours simple, card background white and paying extra attention to margins.

Here is a link to another post where this was requested. I had commented a workaround: https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-insights-questions/ability-to-allow-viewers-to-print-report/m-p...

Hope that helps.

[Ian_Muehlenhaus]

I think by default the report prints on a white background, as printing with that much black ink is almost always undesirable – from a cost and environmental standard. However, there is a solution I just thought of.  

1) Set page options so that all cards have transparent background. 

2) Set page options so that all cards have white (or lightly colored fonts)

3) Create a new empty text card in Page View and enter a single space.

4) Give the blank Text Card a black background fill.

5) In Report Designer go to PRINT

6) Add the blank, black Text Card

7) Resize the black card to cover the entire print page

😎 Send the black text card to the back

9) Hit print

I hope this helps! 

[RamaRaomalisetti]

@Ian_Muehlenhaus  Thank you , I will try
@AkshayHarshe  Thank you