Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more. Jump to latest reply. It's pointless. Just use it the way it is. JR Boulay. I'm sorry, I don't understand. What will that do? In Response To Yzerwing. Won't do anything much but convert cmyk to rgb but you've already done the damage by converting to cmyk in the first place. In Response To BobLevine.
Before PDF, sending native files was common. Whether it was a year book with s of photos or a company brochure, or a poster or a business card. Nothing was ever setup for production. Even to this day I get incorrect PDFs, incorrect sizes, incorrect bleeds, etc.
My life has been made much easier by the allowing of RGB photos to be placed and converted on export to the CMYK space that is needed for printing. I must say this has been a fascinating discussion. So much so, that I feel a need to come out of the shadows and add my two cents.
Sorry in advance about the length. As a prepress type, I was all set to dismiss that suggestion as utter lunacy. But taking a step back, and looking at this frm a pure workflow scenario, it makes a lot of sense. I can see a workflow built around the InDesign document as the jump off point for creating multiple files for different output purposes.
Having said that, this workflow does come with caution in order to properly manage expectations in a print environment. Allowing the export to convert the RGB images to CMYK produces a very thin weak black channel, especially in the highlight to midtones.
All the color data in those color values are carried by the CMY. This becomes problematic for the printer when attempt to maintain color consistency on press across the sheet flashing , be it sheetfed or web. Any adjustments for one color can throw off the balance for another color. Suddenly, your onscreen neutral image is shifting to the red, or shifting to the green on press.
I would be remiss not to acknowledge that this issue can still happen if you convert the images to CMYK before importing. However, the weak black be fixed by applying GCR Gray Component Replacement to the images to beef up the black channel and remove the excess CMY out of the shadow tonal range, but flashing is still an issue in the highlights and quartertones. In PDFx-1a, the flattening process produces a hard cut off between the two colors.
The print vendors we work work all accept PDF-x4a. Even with Proof Setup, you still do not get the full value of the conversion on screen. And if users actually adjusted their monitors to the proper screen settings D50 for print work, people would find it hard to work in such a dark and yellow tone display environment. So for the customer expectation factor, this is why many printers require designers to convert to CMYK before releasing the files to them.
Printers get a bum rap because the file has not been set up correctly for the print output. This is especially true if the designer is working and releasing files by viewing on screen only and does not have access to a color managed high-end output laser printer or ink jet proofer.
At the end of the day, Computer to Plate and Desktop Publishing has been a boom for publishers and designers. I repurposed marketing materials from newsprint to fliers, mailers, inserts, online, billboards, rack cards, etc. Yes, one can effectively perform virtually most targeting and correction in RGB as is done in CMYK provided the system is calibrated and they have the appropriate profile — then easily rinse and repeat for the next medium.
Terry, it is not possible to load in any old profile and edit it via the legacy Custom CMYK interface. This is a long standing misconception that many have.
The legacy Custom CMYK engine of Photoshop is highly configurable, however it is not based on any modern, real world printing condition. Thanks for clarifying, Steven. Thank you for the further clarification Terry. They should provide a custom profile, rather than an out of date default Adobe profile that disregards their ink limit specifications. Sadly the Adobe U.
InDesign uses the same color engine as Photoshop. This is largely up to the user to decide if the outcome dictates applying individual GCR settings or can you get away with applying a single GCR setting to the entire file during export to PDF. Thanks, David.
It could save me a lot of time. Peter, if the original condition is U. The tone and gray balance is very slightly different, not enough to really worry about, the press variation will no doubt be greater!
Is there anything else I should know here? Converts colors to the destination profile space only if they have embedded profiles that differ from the destination profile or if they are RGB colors, and the destination profile is CMYK, or vice versa.
Untagged color objects those without embedded profiles and native objects such as line art or type are not converted. This option is not available if color management is off. Whether the profile is included or not is determined by the Profile Inclusion Policy.
Would the elements that are being converted be imported vector elements? Would these imported objects contain an ICC profile that differs from your document or output profile? I personally prefer to do colour conversions in Acrobat Pro rather than in InDesign, Acrobat Pro offers much finer control and has options to cleanly preserve K only:.
Thank you Stephen. Normally I use Acrobat for such operations. I found this article and wanted to give it a try. Indesign suggests U. Web Coated profile.
If I use it, the black color remains unchanged. If I choose a different profile from the list, black is changed. InDesign suggests nothing, the output profile should be the same as your printer requires.
Using it causes the black color remains unchanged. Using other CMYK profile causes that black is changed. What PDF export setting are you using? Acrobat Pro output preview can be confusing at times! That has caught me by surprise several times in Acrobat. I think this has to do with the setting in the Simulation Profile pop-up menu.
Still need Photoshop to get them into dpi space. But at what size in 72ppi? That is what matters! If you scale them down, resolution ppi increases. In most cases 72 ppi images from clients are shot with at least 6 megapixels and are huge! Oh, and it is ppi, not dpi by the way, dpi are dots, is for print devices…. Linda: Oh yes! You still need Photoshop. You should use photoshop to resample the image to an appropriate resolution, crop, do color adjustments, retouch… nothing wrong with that.
John: If you open a high-res image in Photoshop and it says 72 ppi, then you probably do want to change it to ppi or above for print. This maintains the same information, without change, but distributes it over a smaller area. This is a perfectly fine thing to do! This results in a soft image, nowhere near as good as an image that had been the correct size and resolution to begin with.
Better to start with a healthy image, but sometimes your client gives you junk ;-. Hi, Thank you for this good article. Thank in advance! The simple answer first. If you are starting new imagery, if your target is graphic arts, AdobeRGB is a fairly safe choice. If the imagery will primarily be used in Microsoft Office applications or web pages, sRGB might be safer.
Thanks for the article. I knew I was right and my printers were wrong! One of the biggest finnish newspapers… But a little question.
Whenever you should or not using RGB images in InDesign is mostly based on the following points : — Do you need to have a precise color in your image? You know how much it cost to upgrade such system? And you know that the printing field is getting hit in their kidney money constantly.
Want to print up to 80 inches wides? Yes, there are software that does the job, but those software are not always compatible with with hardware in place.
Makes me think about software build for Windows Are you ready to pay 1. You might be. Those customers that might be willing mostly have their own print assets to print their stuff. My jobs always have all of those issues. I recently took charge of labels boxes and tubs at a company, from a design agency. They used complexed images for backgrounds placed. My question is do I just link the RGB.
PSD background files to indesign and then add the text, spot colour vector objects, and then export as PDF. I dot want the colour to become muddy or brown.
Thanks for you help. Thank you for a nice article. It left me with a question though. Does the same go for. Anything else is a real crapshoot! For new content, I would agree! The same is true for whatever content you place into an InDesign document. Note that.
EPS files are not necessarily vector they can be any combination of text, vector, and raster content. By other vector files, you may be referring to. CGM, etc. Ok, good input, everyone. Thanks a lot. We have been having an issue with a client who is placing RGB ads into InDesign files that are then converted to Grayscale. The converted ads are ending up way too dark.
We are then printing on a web-press on newsprint and in the end the ads are way too dark. We tell our clients to pre-convert. Content that is originally prepared for black and white printing needs to much more seriously account for contrast and tone values.
With color, part of the contrast is the contrast between the colorants themselves which is totally lost in most automatic color to grayscale conversions. I like to then make it into a smart object, then convert to grayscale so smart object will be RGB inside. That also seems to minimize shifts in tone that sometimes happen when you convert to Grayscale. Yeah, right.
You like suicide? You might as well let the RIP do it! I wish I had seen your article before doing that. I can get them back using layers, but this has never happened when using RGB. Libby: Hard to know. Maybe the frame or the image is set to non-printing in the Attributes panel? This conversion did not work well for me at all.
The book printer I used pretty much insisted on converting my files as suggested here and the result was…blurred images and faded color…on the hardback version of my book. The softcover printer did no such conversion and the result was brilliant.
Did you give the printers PDF files? Or the original InDesign files? I explain how to make great PDFs for print in this lynda. Certain colors, pinks, blues and greens just will not match saturation or hue that RGB can reproduce.
The important distinction is whether or not you need to control individual separations most obviously keeping black text on the black plate , not vector or raster. I am sure this is a dumb question but I am a beginner and I have no idea. I am creating a portfolio to submit to graphic design programs and one of the programs wants our work in a PDF format, with RGB colors. Grace: No problem. You might want to check with whoever gave you those directions.
Hi Dov, It is actually instructions for sending in my portfolio. In addition to the files being in A3 format, landscape view. We use the icc profile our printhouse recommend. And always Convert to destination Preserve numbers. For your reply to Troels, I thought the issue is about how adobe handles netted or chained content with icc profile tagged… and what about source profile, destination profile, rendering intent, preserve number…etc.
Logically, if everything is well tagged and late binding approach is honoured across the adobe softwares…the final color space conversion seems to be key in terms of the outcome. For intermediate authorizing software like Indesign, how it integrate such different import from Illustrator or PDF, and how it export the file.
For critical CMYK-based work, this could be a real problem. A secondary option would be the High Quality Print conversion options with absolutely all profiles embedded and no color conversion at PDF creation time. Hopefully this gives you a bit more insight and either comfort or discomfort as to the processes in place. Anyway maybe I have to learn this unspoken rules in forum of the internet world.
What are your suggestions for output to digital presses? I have seen nothing but problems and inconsistent color and procedures to get the output acceptable. For digital presses, I definitely recommend placing RGB images. Adobe RGB will likely fit for late binding approach 2. I save the Illustrator file as an. After that I link the. So what you are saying, in that pdf I would still have a Adobe RGB image, because it is linked into the Illustrator file? Or am I mistaken?
However, you should be aware that once you place such an image in InDesign or import either by link or directly into Illustrator , the eight low-order bits are discarded. The only Adobe application which can save 16bpp images is Photoshop. Although Acrobat can open PDF files with 16bpp images and use watermarks and such with 16bpp images , printing from Acrobat such as to a PostScript printer will again truncate the eight low-order bits.
Place via a link!! So when preflighting the indesign file, are we to look past the errors generated? Found in preflight panel as well as when packaging there is a flag on images using RGB color space.
Thanks in advance. Those are sort of left over from ancient times, and InDesign still feels compelled to mention RGB content. It would be better to take some time and tweak your preflight profiles. This is easily done, you can specify then what colour spaces are acceptable. Ignoring preflight warnings makes it easy to skip over warnings you really do want to do something about. Maybe not? Check what color profile was used to generate the pdf and make sure that the same color profile is used to preview your PDF in Acrobat.
It should be the same. I agree that it is important to know if the Black is truly being converted to four-color rich black… Acrobat does lie about this sometimes. They want the text in K. At least in case of offset. In Acrobat such an option seems to exist, but not in Indesign. This is of importance for offset printing. Was your original text K-only? Or was it text within a Photoshop file?
What PDF setting did you use? Gunter: Yes, the important question is where is the text? If you have an RGB Illustrator file that contains black text, then the text will become 4-color black.
But if the text is in InDesign and it is converting to 4-color, then there is something else going wrong. What great news! Also — does the procedure you describe help with export to EPUB?
Would replacing them with print-quality RGB dpi images make the InDesign file more friendly to both print and ebook creation? Thank you! I look forward to any advice that can help me streamline the EPUB — I have a full-color travel book that with a gazillion photos and I need to know what to do with all these CMYK versions.
But the 2nd best way would probably be to convert them in Photoshop you can batch convert them if need be , resave with the same name, but in a different folder, and then use Relink to Folder to update them all to the new folder. So if I am starting from the beginning with a book that I want in both print and epub, should I resize all the photos some of them are huuuuuuge first and save them in RGB only at dpi.
What size would be optimal? Some of the images are full-page spreads with bleed, and others are small. Stephen, Spot inks will remain spot in all Print PDF exports, but you can use Ink Manager in the export dialog to convert spots to process. Oh I have a follow-up question!
When you use ink manager to convert specific pantone colors to cmyk will there be any variance in the converted cmyk colors compared to the original pantone color? We deal with a 2 color press and print 5 colors on it, but we have many pantone colors as a supporting palette to our pantone logo color. The only color I really need is the logo pantone color. I convert the supporting pantone colors to cmyk in the ink manager. However, this last print job came out unsaturated on the photos AND the pantone colors used on shapes from indesign.
I would like to though since that is suppose to be the goal! Kelsey: There are many Pantone colors that look different when converted to CMYK, sometimes darker or lighter or not as saturated, etc. Whether you use the swatches pallet or the Ink Manger, the results will be the same, usually duller colors than a PMS Spot color would be. These are limitations of the CMYK 4-color process, not you or the printer per se, assuming they did their job correctly. Thanks Bret and Dave for the extra info!
Very nice to know that I can continue doing what I was doing. And a big thank you for info on the print preview Bret. I always neglect that step because our company recently converted from Quark to Indesign. I was just worried it was converting something really, really far off. This is driving me crazy! If you have to do this on a regular basis it might be a good idea to invest in the Pantone Color Bridge swatch books which display a Pantone solid colour swatch next to a swatch printed in CMYK with their recommended ink values.
This is ensures you have a physical copy of what is possible to help with planning and carry along to any press check. Get the coated and uncoated version because there is usually a significant difference between the two.
Selecting Color Mode in InDesign is all based on what your intention is with the document. Are you printing it or is it going to be a digital file? Changing the Color Mode can be achieved a couple of ways. Color Mode is an exceptionally important part of your document.
Printing RGB colors is a big no no. They look completely different than they would on screen. As you begin a new project in InDesign you will more than likely know if it is going to be printed or if it is for a Web or Digital File.
All printed files are in a CMYK format. This is an ink based process where all colors are made up of the four print colors. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Either way the material is made of at least four colors.
On the other hand if you are creating something Web Based never to be printed then your file needs to be RGB format. Step 1: Open your document. Why is CMYK so dull? What does CMYK mean? How do you get vibrant color in CMYK? How do you find the color settings in InDesign? How do you convert to grayscale in InDesign? What does proof colors mean in InDesign?
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