Getting Accurate Colors When Printing Proofs from InDesign
February 22nd, 2008J.K. wrote:
I am in the process of printing a postcard out of InDesign CS3. The background was created in Photoshop CS3, and the information has been added with InDesign. When printing a proof from Photoshop, I get the color I expect to get. Printing out of InDesign, I do not. I even created a box in InDesign with the same color values, and the color is still not correct. I have checked the color profiles, and the object color profile, and they are the same. Any Ideas?
What you’re talking about is “color matching” or “color management,” and to mix it right, you need 4 parts science to 1 part magic, along with a small sprig of luck and an olive. (And of course, it should be shaken, not stirred.)
The bad news is that I can’t tell you exactly what is going wrong in your particular situation. The good news is that I can tell you a number of things to look for, in hopes that you can troubleshoot the problem sufficiently.
Ensure the same color space. If you spec a CMYK color in Photoshop, but the image is in the RGB mode, you’re not going to get what you expect. Even if you convert that RGB image into CMYK, you still won’t get the CMYK values you specified. If you want a CMYK color in Photoshop, you need to make sure the document is in CMYK before you spec it. Seems obvious, but this messes up a lot of people.
This is interesting because a number of people import RGB images into InDesign. That’s not a problem; InDesign converts RGB images to CMYK beautifully. But if you need to have number-accurate color matching between the image and an InDesign swatch, you should probably convert the image to CMYK, then match the color numbers, then import the CMYK version into InDesign.
Ensure the same meaning. CMYK and RGB swatches are meaningless unless you associate a “profile” with them. For example, there are many different “reds” and “cyans.” The profile says what the colors actually look like. So check the Edit > Color Settings dialog box to make sure both Photoshop and InDesign are talking about the same colors. If you’re working with CMYK colors (which I assume you are here), you almost certainly want the Photoshop’s CMYK color profile to be the same as the InDesign document’s CMYK color profile. By default, they are (in the U.S., it’s US Web Coated SWOP v2).
Note that this actually gets rather confusing, because the color profiles in Color Settings are not necessarily the profiles assigned to the InDesign or Photoshop document open in front of you. InDesign actually makes it rather difficult to figure out what the current document profile is. Perhaps the best way to find out is to choose Edit > Convert to Profile. The current document settings are listed as “Source Space.” Then press Cancel — don’t actually use the convert to profile feature unless you really know what you’re doing.
When the CMYK working space color profiles are the same, then speccing a CMYK color in Photoshop and as a swatch in InDesign ensure that both programs are talking about the same color.
Do you need to embed profiles? A lot of people say, “always turn on Embed Profile when saving documents from Photoshop. These people are apparently unaware that InDesign ignores profiles embedded in CMYK images by default, so you’re just wasting space. A lot of space! CMYK profiles are usually 1 or 2 MB large. Doesn’t seem like much, but that adds up pretty fast after 50 or 100 images.
You do need to embed your CMYK profiles if there’s a chance that the CMYK image will be opened for further editing later on, especially by someone else who may not know what CMYK space you’ve been using. But if you’re just making images to send off to print, then it’s sort of silly to embed the profile because InDesign generally uses the actual CMYK numbers in the image, ignoring its color.
As usual, I’m oversimplifying a bit here. I go into more detail in Real World InDesign, Real World Photoshop, and my Lynda.com Beyond the Basics title (which should be out in another week or two).
Preserve Numbers. If you’re printing separations or to Composite CMYK rather than RGB (see below), make sure that Preserve Numbers is turned on in the Color Management pane of InDesign’s Print dialog box. It’s okay if that checkbox is turned on but also grayed out. Same thing goes in the Output pane of the Export PDF dialog box: You should use Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) — not the plain ol’ convert to destination. When Preserve Numbers is enabled, InDesign just passes CMYK values through to the printer, rather than trying to match CMYK colors. For most of us, in most cases, that’s a good thing — it avoids things like 100% black turning into four-color CMYK black.
Printing Proofs from InDesign. If you’re going to print a proof from InDesign to a color printer, you first want to visit the View > Proof Setup > Custom dialog box. Choose the final output printer here — the press profile, not the proofer! Then, in InDesign’s Print dialog box:
- In the Output pane, choose whether your proofing device is Composite RGB or Composite CMYK. In general, I treat color inkjet printers and color laser printers as RGB devices. Even though they use CMYK inks or toner, they tend to expect RGB data to be coming at them, so that’s what I like to send them.
- In the Color Management Pane, choose Proof. The profile you last used in the Proof Setup dialog box is remembered and shows up here. Again, this should be the profile of your final press device (or use something like SWOP if you have no custom profile).
- In the Color Handling pop-up menu, choose Let InDesign Determine Colors.
- In the Printer Profile pop-up menu, choose the profile for your proofing device. Most good inkjets come with a number of custom profiles, one for each different paper stock or resolution you’re using. Pick the closest one you can. If you don’t have a custom profile for that printer, consider just using sRGB IEC61966.
Don’t expect a lot from a laser. No matter how good your color laser printer, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever get as good or as consistent color as from an inkjet printer. You can get reasonable color, but don’t expect miracles. That said, the colors between Photoshop and InDesign should still match on a color laser printer (which was the original question, if I recall).
Turn off driver color management. When you print from InDesign or Photoshop, that program does all its color management, and then hands the file off to the printer driver to print it. Well, in many cases, the printer driver gets in the act, too, doing further color management! That’s bad. So, while you’re in the Print dialog box, click Printer (on the Mac) or Properties (Windows) and figure out how to turn off your printer’s color management settings. That may be in the ColorSync panel, or in the printer’s special settings, or both. You often have to search around a bit to find it.
Trust the Numbers, not the Proof. Ultimately, if you spec 50% cyan in the CMYK Photoshop image, and you spec 50% cyan in InDesign, and Preserve Numbers is turned on, you’re going to get 50% cyan in both places on press. Period. So if your color proof on a desktop printer doesn’t look exactly right, you should immediately open Window > Output > Separation Preview then turn on Separations in the panel’s View pop-up menu. Now scroll around the document, watching the numbers in the panel. That’s real. I love that feature.
In general, if you do all these things, you should be getting pretty accurate color, and the colors between Photoshop and InDesign should certainly match up.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things along the way here, and as I said, I’ve oversimplified a number of steps and concerns. My late co-author Bruce Fraser is likely arching his eyebrows like mad right now, wherever he may be. I encourage folks to jump in and suggest other color management fixes they’ve found useful.
If you want more about color management, check out the titles I mentioned earlier. Also look for Real World Color Management, and you may be interested in the post I made a couple of years ago about why it’s not so bad if you’re not “synchronized” in your Suite.
David, great posting — you’ve crammed a lot of Good Advice into very little space! But you left out an important thing: the Document Blend Space — whether this is set to RGB or CMYK makes a huge output difference. Sometimes. At least on rainy days, if they contain an “R”.
I tend to use acrobat as a middle ground for testing. Not perfect but it is a quick check.
I am a printer, so I get this exact question sometimes. When you wrote “I treat color inkjet printers and color laser printers as RGB devices. Even though they use CMYK inks or toner, they tend to expect RGB data to be coming at them”, that is the correct thing to do.
Most consumer grade inkjet printers only want RGB data. If you print CMYK to them, they convert back to RGB, then to the CMYK for the particular inkset in the driver.
I’ve been through this before printing lasers for our agency’s books. I tried all of the fancy color management options on InDesign, but discovered when I printed just using the defaults InDesign came with along with my print driver everything printed perfectly. I turned off my Color Settings and everything, and it worked fine.
I’m not sure if the person asking the question was using spot colors, but this might help in understanding a bit more about the differences between Photoshop and InDesign and color matching…
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/2007/02/busting-myth-achieving-consistent-color.html
David, thanks for writing about CM, I think this is still quite unexplored area. While my English is not so well, can you define what exactly are you reffering to when you use (in 2nd paragraph) words ’spec’, ‘convert’ and ‘mode’?
I’ve always been frustrated trying to print in InDesign. Even after reading this greatly written article, I still can’t print matched RGB colors.
I have a logo with a solid RGB background. If I try to match it in indesign with the same color using the same RGB numbers - it will match on screen but not printed.
Curiously, if I try to do the same thing with CMYK files and numbers, everything matches up on screen and in print.
All in all it’s ok because most things I design are for CMYK, but if you’re trying to make a quick flyer to print at home and you just want to leave it RGB, kiss accurate color goodbye!
“Trust the numbers not the proof”
This is the ultimate truth in colour management, it is accurate and to a point demystifies the CM process.
Talk to your printer about proofing as well, they know their presses and can suggest colour profiles or even apply them for you at repro stage.
Remember the days of film and colour accurate cromalins? Digital proofing has it place in the streamlined workflow of pdfs and
’straight to plate’ but I do miss the certainty of a cromalin.
David - great post!
Big fan of the InDesign Secrets site…
I’ve tried and tried as well with all the CM settings, still find it safer and less stressful to keep numbers AS IS as long as i’ve converted rgb to cmyk. Unless I have a huge RGB pdf I might use CM from indesign. I’m still old school. (pre-press & printing)
I agree with Tim, I miss seeing a crom or m/p proof over a digital one.
50% black actually being a 50% k dot.
Something to keep in mind — if you have any transparency in Indesign CS2, and this includes drop shadows, you’re almost certain to get odd rectangular patches around the transparency area where the colour is brighter and grainier. I nearly killed my brain trying to fix this issue, then gave up and laid all the transparencies out in Photoshop.
Daniel, if you’re getting rectangular patches, you need to read this post about Yucky Discolored Box Syndrome. Most people don’t have the problem you mention and their transparency prints beautifully.
hi,
I’ve read the posts and am still having trouble with this issue. I have logos designed for me indesign. though i work on a calibrated screen and so does the designer our colors don’t match. I need to export the logos and designs out of indesign often to photoshop and when that’s done the colors look completely different. it seems that when you input numbers for cmyk or rgb they should change correspondingly, but that doesn’t seem to be the case and i’ve begun to not trust the color management aspects of these programs for that reason.
Robbie, I can tell you without a doubt that the Adobe creative suite color management system is extremely robust. If you’re seeing something that is “completely different,” then there’s a very good chance that it’s something inconsistent or wrong in your workflow. Color Mgmt is not simple, but it is (for the most part) logical. I’d encourage you to take a look at some of the other sources mentioned in the post.
Hi
I have problems with my HP ColorLaserJet 3600 running on my Mac. When I print out of Photoshop the colors are as expected. When I use the same picture in InDesign or export it as pdf and print it, the colors are way too dull.
But, when I import this pdf in Photoshop and print it from there, all colors are as expected again…
The same pdf printed on another CLJ 3600 on a windows machine will have also the colors as exprected.
>So, I think this is a driver confict on the Mac.
Martin
Now I found a solution:
I just opened the pdf (created in InDesign) with Apples preview-> and tadaaa, it works as like you would expect it…
(But why the colors are strange out of InDesign an Acrobat I still don’t know)
There are posts here stating that InDesign color management is robust. It isn’t. Using the same color profile on InDesign as in Photoshop (in CS3, on a mac) results in different outputs. This is because the color print engine in InDesign is different to Photoshop’s. To get good matches, you either have to create new InDesign specific profiles OR output to PDF and reimport into Photoshop. I think this is something to do with the fact that InDesign does not switch off color management, and so you end up double color managed. Not sure. Various posts on the web about it, but lots of people are waiting for Adobe to fix. Come on Adobe!!
Barney, I think you may have some facts mixed up. ID and Pshop do use the same color engine (unless you change the defaults). ID and PShop provide the same color results when printing, as long as your settings are the same throughout the process.
I’d be curious to see the posts you refer to on the Web.