Comments on: Why sRGB and Unsynchronized Color Settings Can Be a Good Thing

By: Lukas Engqvist

Lukas Engqvist — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:00:36 +0000

I heard that China is a large printproduction for the USA. Also many companies are worldwide, and it would be wise for them to think of global standards when they invest millions on branding. If you have global visions (for yourself or your clients), think globally.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:34:48 +0000

Lukas, I assume you mean you recommend that users choose ECI rgb in Photoshop, not InDesign. As I mentioned in the post, unless you’re making RGB swatches in InDesign (I wouldn’t), you should just use sRGB for InDesign. But sure, another rgb standard would be fine in Photoshop, too.

I think people (at least people in the USA) aren’t moving to the ISO standard for the same reason that so few of us use the metric system and so many of us eat the same type of candy that we did as children: Nobody wants to change until there is a really compelling reason to.

You are absolutely correct that speccing CMYK (or even RGB) colors without specifying a particular device or profile is completely meaningless. Providing LAB values makes much more sense when you’re not sure what printing device you’ll be using. Rumor has it that IKEA now specs all InDesign color swatches as Lab now for this very reason: They have to print their catalogs all over the world, but they want to make sure the colors are consistent.

By: Lukas Engqvist

Lukas Engqvist — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:39:18 +0000

I buy the RGB stuff, except I recomend users to use the ECI rgb as it has the correct DTP environment whitepoint (5000K), tiny detail but can be mission critical when evaluating the lighter shades… but most important is that the rgb image is tagged (especially important when using relative colour rendering, after adajusting for out-of-gamaut colours).
Sorry to be a difficult, but why aren’t people moving to ISO. Marketing and packaging is international, some campaigns involve printed matter printed in several different contenents, and expecting the same results.
The big probelm is ofcourse that often a campaign will be produced on/in a wide variety of media. And a CMYK (eg 50 20 5 0) will not be the same colour in a newspaper as on a laser printer. Pantone colours can use LAB values, so for corporate colours I hope design firms will learn to give LAB labels rather than Pantone, RGB or CMYK.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:18:27 +0000

Steve, I look forward to the debate! My argument is that Adobe’s method makes sense for a beginner, but not necessarily for someone who thinks it through.

Branislav, I respect your opinions, but I think you have missed the point: Using sRGB for the default working color space in InDesign does not limit the colors you can use/see. If you have images from Photoshop that are tagged with AdobeRGB, they will still be in that space. The only time the default RGB space is used is when you specify colors in InDesign using RGB (do you do that?) or when you import an untagged RGB image. When do you import untagged RGB images? I bet that 99% of the untagged RGB images you use are in sRGB.

I do suggest using Adobe RGB in Photoshop, especially when you are editing images. And then, when you save from Photoshop, the Adobe RGB space will be embedded in the image. InDesign sees that and uses that, even if ID is set to sRGB.

By: Branislav Milic

Branislav Milic — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:00:04 +0000

This could be an endless discussion but I would say that I don’t agree. My Eizo covers Adobe RGB, why should I stop using its ability to cover more printable CMYK colors than if I used sRGB ? And think about pro scannerists who like to work with high end monitor like Eizo and Barco and create new colors using Lab values because this is how they “think” the color. By just letting sRGB pass through the video device (monitor) they will not see some of the colors they just created.

Your goal is to print to CMYK ? Use a large RGB color space like Adobe RGB or ECI-RGB and a good monitor.

By: Steve Werner

Steve Werner — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:31:33 +0000

David,

This sounds like a good topic for a debate at the Seattle InDesign Conference because it runs totally counter to Adobe’s recommendations. Since you’ll have access to some of the Adobe engineers in Seattle, this would be a good forum to talk about it!