Re: profiles and pantone colors
Re: profiles and pantone colors
- Subject: Re: profiles and pantone colors
- From: Chris Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 10:03:36 -0600
On Apr 29, 2005, at 2:25 PM, Mark wrote:
I've always been a little confused about how defining a Pantone color
works with a profile. I'm talking about any application here
(Photoshop, InDesign, Quark, Illustrator, etc).
Do the profiles ignore things like spot colors or do all these
programs have special "layers" that are untouched by the profile? (I'm
not talking about converting a pantone to a 4c build)
It depends on the kind of profile, but if you're referring to "output
device profiles" such as a CMYK profile for a printer or press, then
yes there is discrimination by the profile because a spot color isn't
CMYK. So a CMYK profile can't be used as a source profile for an object
built with a spot color. If you're working with true spot colors, the
application assumes you will be printing with that ink in a bucket,
CMYK+spot for example. So it's going to put any object using that spot
color on its own channel, which becomes its own plate on press.
Ideally, we'd have LAB-based libraries so that these Pantone colors
could be simulated on-screen. Until CS2, Photoshop was the only
mainstream application that had LAB-based Pantone solid color
libraries. But even with LAB-based libraries, there isn't enough
information to know two important things to simulate spot color
behavior: TVI (or dot gain), and opacity. Without these, it's not
possible to accurately simulate or proof tints of spot colors, or the
overprint behavior.
What confuses me is how I can have a profile attached to a document
but then define a Pantone color that might be in or out of gamut but
not have that colour touched by the profile.
Because "the profile" is a CMYK profile, which only affects CMYK
objects in the document. There are "named color profiles" that can
contain the spot color name and its LAB value, however named color
profiles are not supported in mainstream applications.
Chris Murphy
Color Remedies (TM)
www.colorremedies.com/realworldcolor
-------------------------------------------------------------
Co-author "Real World Color Management, 2nd Edition"
Published by PeachPit Press (ISBN 0-321-26722-2)
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