Comments on: Why a CMYK Vector Image Changed Color

By: ExPrepGuy

ExPrepGuy — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:25:32 +0000

I hate you all! When I used to preflight, prep, rip and film/plate all by myself, I was on top of the world. I would just insist the client was wrong for embedding a profile, and ‘expecting’ us to convert or honor it. It simply isn’t done that way, I told them. Of course these were print brokers who don’t know their knees from their elbows.

But now I own and operate a digital press, I deal with photographers and creative people more directly, and the scam is up. I have to ‘honor’ and ‘don’t convert’ as much as I have to ‘yes, sir’ the clients to death.

. . . and I thought digital was going to make all that go away!

By: P. Savelberg

P. Savelberg — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:20:39 +0000

I have the same problem here, but this is not working for me …

When i open the file, it gives the mismatch dialog but under Leave is standing PReserve Numbers and under Adjust it only saya Preserve.
The problem i have is that EPS files with a color are printed purple ..

By: Arjen de Fouw

Arjen de Fouw — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:26:07 +0000

There you have a point. And how does the designer tell the printer under which circumstances he meant the colour to be what it is meant to be, by including the file that tells him what these circumstances were, the profile. That way the printer will know what your 100% cyan and 50% magenta looked like when you were looking at it on your screen. Now he can reproduce that “feeling” on his press. Just reproducing these percentages on his press will probably differ from what you’ve seen on the screen.
For that same reason you will need to respect embedded profiles in photographs and artwork you will receive. Maybe you’d want to convert them to your own working standard, but DON’T just assign another profile to them because it will alter the colours. By converting to another profile, you might alter the way the colour is separated in cmyk, but the “feeling” (the intent) will be reproduced as accurately as possible.

Going back to the fist issue of this post, did the colour of the vector image change on output or on screen? Might be an important issue.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:15:12 +0000

Arjen, I know the feeling! However, there literally is no such thing as turning off color management. InDesign (and other programs, such as QX) always do color management. Always. There is no way to turn it off, even if you see an “off” button. “Off” just means “do color management blindly, without telling me what you’re doing or letting me have any control over it.”

Using color in your documents is great, but it requires responsibility. Someone needs to take the responsibility for making sure that color works out right. In the old days, that responsibility was the printer or color house. Today, in most cases that responsibility falls on the shoulders of the designer/production artist.

By: Arjen de Fouw

Arjen de Fouw — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:11:32 +0000

The more I read what you write, the more I get the feeling you’d best turn off colourmanagement all together. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about profiles ever.
Even already color separated images from photoshop whithout even knowing who’s going to print according to what standard won’t keep you awake at night. Colour will differ from the orriginal anyway.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:14:53 +0000

Arjen, you are right that embedding profiles is important when trying to maintain color consistency. However, the assumption is that when you have created a CMYK file, you do not want those CMYK values to change.

For example, when someone specifies 50% cyan in Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign, they usually want 50% cyan, no matter how it is printed. They care more about preserving the number than the exact look of the 50% cyan.

However, sometimes you may have a CMYK image from Photoshop that you care more about preserving its colors. That’s okay. Import into InDesign, and from the Import Options dialog box (or from Object > Color Image Settings), choose the profile you want to assign to it. If you do that, InDesign turns off “preserve numbers” for that one image.

By: Arjen de Fouw

Arjen de Fouw — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:15:52 +0000

David, crazy!. Embedding profiles is, as far as I know, especially to minimize colour differences. I fail to see why you wouldn’t assign or, later on, preserve the assigned profiles. Maybe I just don’t understand. So I think I’ll retier from this discussion.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:10:28 +0000

Arjen, are you talking about the CMYK and RGB pop-up menus in the Color Settings dialog box? Those affect future documents you make, but not the current document! Crazy.

By: Arjen de Fouw

Arjen de Fouw — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:36:59 +0000

Sorry, the image I tried to send, didn’t stick.

By: Arjen de Fouw

Arjen de Fouw — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:34:35 +0000

In your post you mentioned that you didn’t know of any other way to determine the policy for profile mismatch. That surprises me very much, because you do discuss the “Ask when Opening checkbox in the Profile Mismatches section…”. Directly above these checkboxes are the pulldown menu’s for the RGB and CMYK policies.

/Users/arjen/Desktop/policy.png

An important menu if you’re concerned about colourmanagement, I think. Any externaly produced image is should be considered to be conciously designed and should be honored like that. The only way to have any grip on colour consistancy is to preserve the embedded profile (if any) and convert them when going to the press.
Yours truely, Arjen