Re: Can't get the color with Illustrator
Re: Can't get the color with Illustrator
- Subject: Re: Can't get the color with Illustrator
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 09:23:13 -0600
In a message dated 6/21/03 8:05:33 AM, email@hidden
writes:
<< This may be unrelated, so it may be more FYI.
In AI 10, if you make a Pantone spot color in RGB mode, convert it to
CMYK,
then switch to CMYK mode -- the CMYK specs will be different than if
you
made the color in CMYK mode to begin with.>>
I'm not even sure how one would do this. It's possible define a spot
color in an RGB document and then convert the spot color into RGB, and
then convert the document to CMYK. But how do you convert the spot
color to CMYK in an RGB document?
On Sunday, June 22, 2003, at 10:00 PM, email@hidden wrote:
In this day and age, I find the software just as stupid as it is
marvelous.
The toolset should be much more astute for our benefit as opposed to
our
dismay. Case in point, why is so easy to misuse a Pantone in an RGB
document?
I think this is more a political question than anything technical. The
Pantone system was designed for printing spot, not with process.
Pantone's mistake, as I see it, is that they continue to listen to the
request of end users to punish themselves by asking for solid to
process guides, and a continuation of the delusion that there are
reference CMYK values for any of the PMS colors.
The problem with Illustrator (like every application except for
Photoshop 7) is that it defines Pantone solids with Pantone's CMYK
values. So if you want to print with equivalents, instead of with
solids, in an RGB document, the conversion Illustrator uses is:
1. Lookup CMYK values in the swatch library (defined by Pantone)
2. Assume source profile is working CMYK.
3. Assume destination profile is document RGB.
4. Assume rendering intent and BPC as in Color Settings
5. Convert
So the biggest contribution to the error is #1 and #2. First, the
swatch library, like Photoshop 7, should define solids in LAB and end
the myth that solids can be defined with CMYK values. Second, the
source profile being assumed is flat out wrong so the color appearance
is now wrong and any subsequent conversions will attempt to preserve
the wrong color appearance. There would need to be a Pantone output
profile that defines their press conditions in order to solve problem
#2 and as far as I know there isn't such a beast.
Another case in point, InDesign 2 lets you use an RGB raster photo as a
background and when you place any graphic, be it 1bit, greyscale, RGB,
CMYK, or
even a shadow effect that requires transparency on that background, it
will
change the RGB background to CMYK if the Transparency Blend found in
the pulldown
Edit Menu is set to CMYK and it will only effect that single page in
the
document. Shouldn't InDesign know enough not to change data especially
without a
warning dialog?
This is complicated, I think. From a certain point of view, by having
selected the Transparency Blending Space as Document CMYK, you've
already given ID permission to convert RGB objects into CMYK as
necessary. And vice versa if set to Document RGB. Maybe Adobe will
surprise us in ID 3, but at the moment it seems to me there isn't a way
for them to do mixed mode blending when transparency is involved and
maintain proper color management.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (TM)
www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor
---------------------------------------------------------
Co-author "Real World Color Management"
Published by PeachPit Press (ISBN 0-201-77340-6)
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