Colour Settings off

[RobertStaley@adobeforums.com]

I am designing a magazine which will be printed using ctp and Creo/Bursque workflow so my files will be pdf.

I've been advised by my printer to turn off colour management in the PS colour settings,
but where do the separation settings get implemented and how do I optimise my tiff images for the press, such as highlight and shadow dot etc, if when PS converts to cmyk from rgb there are no settings enabled?

[Peter_Figen@adobeforums.com]

No matter what your workflow, you still need the right conversion and file setup. Turning off CM, as your printer suggests, won't affect your end at all, only make it more difficult for you to get your work done. Printers are afraid of CM because it threatens their proofing cashflow.

If you do turn CM off, PS will still use whatever you have loaded for your RGB and CMYK working spaces and use those as the basis for any color conversion. You can still use Convert to Profile to select an alternative destination profile. So turning CM off doesn't really turn it off, it only makes your job more difficult.Haveing CM on or off has nothing to do with setting highlight and shadow dot, which have to be measured with the Info Palette no matter what your overall workflow.

[g_ballard@adobeforums.com]

> turn off colour management in the PS colour settings

Unless your printer confirmed your working spaces match his working spaces, he is "very confused" (to put it kindly) about HOW Adobe color management works...

[g_ballard@adobeforums.com]

More on my point:

<http://www.gballard.net/psd/honormyembeddedprofile.html>

[RobertStaley@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Peter,

how do I know what my working space settings should be, do I need to obtain information for the cmyk settings from my printer, like paper stock, ink limit, positive or negative plates,separation methods- ucr or gcr, black generation etc.as he is asking for composite pdf files and has provided pdf settings which don't mention anything about the separation settings needed

I'm at the stage where I'm optimising my images for press. I'm colour correcting rgb tiffs, restting the end points etc (do I need to know the specific highlight and shadow dot reproduceable by his press) or can I assume a 90 percent shadow and an 8 percent highlight for example

It's confusing, I just want to make sure I prepare the files correcly in PS before I bring them into Quark

Any advise from a more experience head would be most welcome as this is my first attempt at anything this big.

Sorry it's so long Rob

[g_ballard@adobeforums.com]

Your printer should supply you with a custom profile that you can Image> Mode> Convert to Profile, but if he is recommending CM Off he likely won't understand what you're asking for.

The best I know how to do in such cases, is find out if the press is sheetfed or web, if the paper is coated or uncoated, then Image> Mode> Convert to Profile (US Sheetfed Coated if the job is going to sheetfed press on coated stock, for example).

The general theory is work/archive in a higher-gamut RGB colorspace (like Adobe RGB) -- BEFORE ever going to CMYK -- then as the last possible step: Image> Mode> Convert to Profile the Target CMYK...

If you are not sure about PS and color-managed workflow, I would start you here (with steps 1-4):
<http://www.gballard.net/nca.html#getagoodscreen>

[Peter_Figen@adobeforums.com]

You can be pretty sure that this printer is not going to have a profile. You can be pretty sure that the majority of printers don't. You can, however, usually get pretty good information regarding ink limits and sometimes even how small a dot they can reliably hold. If it's DTP, the your 8 percent highlight is probably too high, but it depends on the paper.

It also appears from your spelling of the word color, that you might be in the UK, which also changes the equation. The chances that your printer might possibly conform to any of the profile standards included in Photoshop are even less than they are in the US, where those odds are mighty slim.

I think that in the absence of have a good profile, or having one made for you, your best bet is going to be to output a couple of tests with the printer to see where his proofing system is at. If it were me, I would just send him a profile target and make a custom profile and be done with it, but you may not have that luxury.

[Rene_Walling@adobeforums.com]

Printers are afraid of CM because it threatens their proofing cashflow.




Not to mention that it "reduces" colour matching from an Art to a mere science...

One thing I often do with peopl;e who want me to turn CM off is to ask them to tell me what their colour settings are and then convert to the CMYK space they use.

[Peter_Figen@adobeforums.com]

I recently peeked into the Color Settings of a printer that a client was sending my RGB scans to. The printer's conversions yielded proofs that were so dark and yellow-green that they were for the most part unasable and unfixable. I made a custom profile of their proofing system. Their Color Settings were of course set to Off, with AppleRGB for RGB and PS4CMYK Defaults for CMYK. This meant that every RGB was assumed to be AppleRGB no matter what it really was, and that their conversion, which was starting with a false assumption and then going to a CMYK profile that was totally inappropriate for the proofing system. No wonder they couldn't get anything close to decent color.

The custom profile I made also revealed that their new proofing standard, and everyone has a different standard when it comes to DTP, was nowhere in the vicinity of US Sheetfed v2, or anyone elses profile that I have in my ColorSync folder. A simple Assign Profile told me how far off they were.

So, at least in this case, getting the Color Settings was a help, but not the whole story. They were instrumental in troubleshooting the situation.After the book is printed I'll probably have a meeting with the printer to shed some light on why they are having such a problem, but I really don't know if anyone there understands enough to matter.