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Re: Color management in a CMYK world

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Re: Color management in a CMYK world

Subject: Re: Color management in a CMYK world
From: Mike Adams <email@hidden>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 17:00:08 -0600


Lorenzo,

I'm trying to convince a print company to start using color management. The big problem I'm facing is to deal with "editing in CMYK" habit. They accept to build profiles for their printers but they insist in editing only in CMYK. I'm following an "one step at a time" approach and I'll insist in moving to RGB only after the profile usage is well accept among the CMYK guys. Of course, I'll show the RGB workflow as soon I made the printer profile.

Most folks who are reluctant to switch to RGB aren't reluctant because they care about what color space the file is in. They're reluctant because they think that if they start working in RGB, they have to start thinking in RGB. I've got a fifteen-minute demonstration that I show guys in this situation, and I've never had anyone after seeing it want to stick with CMYK. You might point out to them that they can still use whatever sliders in their applications they want.

I know that there's no "CMYK working space" and dealing with CMYK to CMYK conversions is asking for trouble. The question is which CMYK profile should the print guys use when editing the files? The printer profile? It seems very odd to me... They receive untagged CMYK files from their customer (actually, they ASK for untagged CMYK files), so the customer does the separations.

They run large ink-jet printers (solvent based) driven by Scanvec Amiable's Photoprint. Any recommendation for building profiles for these printers ? (which target, number of patches, ink limit, CGR settings, etc).

You can just about bet that running these types of machines and in this type of environment and with the clients they're likely to have, that if they get untagged CMYK, it's going to have been created in Illustrator or Photoshop and be SWOP (the default for both) unless they accept Corel Draw files which have their own default CMYK space.

And, it's a good bet that on most media they use, SWOP is going to have a smaller gamut than their printers, which is probably why they're reasonably happy and don't want to change. It's hard to chase colors you can't print that way. Only problem of course is that they're leaving a lot of machine capability lying on the table.

The right way to do it is to profile at the RIP. Photoprint's sequence--or Flexi-Signs is and I'm pretty sure Photoprint is the same--as most RIP's, is: single-channel ink limit; linearization; multi-channel ink-limit; ICC profile. It's a bad, bad, bad idea to try to set ink limits anywhere other than in the RIP. My procedure with all RIP's is to do the three first steps in the RIP, then build and import a Monaco profile. My experience has been that on these machines right around a thousand patches is a good bet. Fewer gets you a poor profile and more tends to be overkill.

Ink limits of course will vary greatly from machine to machine and media to media. And personally I favor a very light touch on GCR on all inkjets. What they need with these machines is a profile for every media they use on each machine, in every resolution they print on that media. Since most such companies don't know when designing which machine they might send the job to print to, it's almost impossible to bind to the correct CMYK space upfront with so many profiles to choose from.

What they need to do is work in RGB, soft-proof to the media they're going to use through their own machine profiles, then do the CMYK conversion at the RIP.

Honestly, it's an in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound thing. Until they're ready to do it all, they shouldn't even start.

Regards,

Mike Adams _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Colorsync-users mailing list (email@hidden) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: This email sent to email@hidden Follow-Ups: Re: Color management in a CMYK world From: Lorenzo Ridolfi <email@hidden> References: >Color management in a CMYK world (From: Lorenzo Ridolfi <email@hidden>) Prev by Date: RE: Color management in a CMYK world Next by Date: Re: Process control in a G7 world Previous by thread: Re: Color management in a CMYK world Next by thread: Re: Color management in a CMYK world Index(es): Date Thread