Save for Web and color profiles: any way to make it work?

[Alexander_Kogan.@adobeforums.com]

Hi, people :)

My turn to ask the questions. AI9.0 / Win98

Here's the thing: I work mostly through Internet, and my work includes arts for print. The easiest and handiest way IMHO) to send a draft to a client is by using the Save For Web dialog. I'm using the US Prepress Default color profile across the whole workstation and it's been working fine for me.

The thing is, what I see in the Save for Web preview doesn't look like what I see at the Artboard and has little in common with the resulting GIF or JPG! (The same goes for the Export dialog as well, although there's no Export preview). And the client's better shown to what he/she's going to get, for the color changes at print can be harmful to the client-designer relationship :D

My knowledge in the color profiles area is still somewhat shaky, so I really need an advice. Is there a way to keep the exported bitmaps' colors consistent with the colors shown within the program?

Maybe there's some trick with the Color Proof? I have it set to "US Web coated SWOP" and Relative Colorimetric, but I don't have a first idea what could that mean... :)

TIA!
Cheers :)

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Alexander,

Since your workspace (and, presumably, destination) profile is U.S. Web Coated (SWOP), you are, I take it working in CMYK mode... and therein lies your problem.

JPEG and GIF were designed for the RGB world. Do a quick check in Photoshop. If you're working in CMYK, GIF does not even appear as a "save as" format option. Yes, you can pick GIF in Save For Web (SFW), but I'm not sure what happens there -- whether and how PS does a space conversion. Also, if you're working in CMYK and try to do a SFW to JPG, you'll notice the ICC profile embed option is grayed out. (SFW in IL10 is a different in that regard, but, again, I don't know what it does when you save CMYK to JPG with the ICC profile box checked.)

The point is that unless you perform the CMYK to RGB space conversion yourself under profile control before saving as JPG or GIF, you had better expect wacky results. Whether you embed an RGB profile (sRGB for screen viewing) or not is not that important unless you know for a fact that your client is going to be viewing your files with a color-managed application. What is important is that you control the conversion to RGB if the intent is screen viewing.

I send my clients screen proofs of my print-destined (CMYK) work using Acrobat. By selecting screen display distilling options (mainly, convert everything to sRGB under CM), I end up with a compact PDF that I know will look decent -- reasonably close to the final printed piece -- on my client's monitor (unless they have grossly misadjusted their monitor's controls).

That is the "easiest and handiest" method for me because it gives me fairly reliable color results without having to convert to RGB before saving (Acrobat takes care of the space conversion).

=-= Harron =-=

[Alexander_Kogan.@adobeforums.com]

Hi, Harron

I would choose PDF as a proof format, but my workflow includes up to a dozen revisions per day for one client, and some illustrations are just huge. I've recently done a map that had about 25Mb worth of vectors, no way I was sending it there and back again 5 times a day in PDF! Bitmap could be a solution, but...

How about exporting it as a CMYK PSD, then converting it to RGB in PS and exporting as JPG or GIF? Could that provide a decently similar GIF or JPG? (just in case you know, I gotta run right now, can't try it myself, but I'll try later).

Maybe I should just stop color manage it while I'm working, and then turn the CM on when it's done and try to match the colors with the managed ones?

Cheers :)

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Alexander,

...25Mb worth of vectors...




I assume you mean 25MB. That's a lot of vector!

How about exporting it as a CMYK PSD, then converting it to RGB in PS
and exporting as JPG or GIF?




Yeah... but if you don't have any linked CMYK images, you could just change over to RGB within Illustrator (I would use sRGB) then do a SFW from there. Otherwise, yes... or save as EPS and open/rasterize in PS, convert to RGB, then SFW. Any of the above should, in theory, get you better color accuracy than doing a SFW on a CMYK document. But understand the limitations of the process: You cannot always have the full range of colors represented when you move among color spaces with different gamuts.

And the client's better shown to what he/she's going to get, for the color
changes at print can be harmful to the client-designer relationship.




You want your client to see something on their screen that is close to what they'll get off the press. That depends on a lot of things, not the least of which is your client having a calibrated monitor and a color-managed viewing application.

There are a lot of things you can do to ensure a reasonably close match with your proofs -- whether electronic or hard copy. But, in the end, covering your own behind is best accomplished by having the printer output contract proofs before going to press.

=-= Harron =-=

[Alexander_Kogan.@adobeforums.com]

Harron,

My 25MB thing (BTW, what is the difference between MB and Mb?) looked like this <http://www.seekvisum.com/pfimages/render12.gif>, the major "weight" were the scatter brushes and many small objects (I still don't understand why brushes eat memory, aren't they supposed to reduce entropy?). I was basically posting on my server an overview gif at about 30-40% of actual size and along with it a couple of close ups, so the whole bunch didn't weight more than 300Kb (or KB?)

As you see, there were no much type there :) Obviously, the colors aren't exactly what they will be when printed, but I always try to state it when I'm working with a client. And I always work in CMYK which doesn't have much outside of RGB gamut (if there's something), so basically convert it to RGB isn't a problem... as long as the color profiles don't screw the whole thing up, if you pardon me for the expression :)

As for exporting as EPS - isn't EPS a non color managed format? What would be the idea then of exporting something as EPS and then re-arranging in PS if there's no color format in there?

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Alexander,

BTW, what is the difference between MB and Mb?




See <http://www.fact-index.com/m/me/megabyte.html> .

And I always work in CMYK which doesn't have much outside of RGB gamut
(if there's something), so basically convert it to RGB isn't a problem...




See <http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/4118.html> .

As for exporting as EPS - isn't EPS a non color managed format?




From Photoshop 7 help, "Embedding profiles in saved documents":

To toggle the embedding of the document's current color profile, select or deselect ICC Profile (Windows) or Embed Color Profile (Mac OS). This option is available only for the native Photoshop format (.psd) and PDF, JPEG, TIFF, EPS, DCS, and PICT formats.

But for vector EPS out of Illustrator, I believe you are right: that's essentially non-color-managed. Still, don't lose sight of my point. Presumably, you have the same CM settings in Illustrator and Photoshop. So, when you bring the EPS into PS from IL, you assign the same CMYK workspace (e.g., U.S. Web Coated). The subsequent conversion to RGB is thus still under your control.

Nice artwork, by the way. (That GIF is abour 380KB. I'd be curious as to the size of a properly distilled PDF from the same vector original.)

=-= Harron =-=

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Alexander,

Our exchange made me curious about how SFW handles CMYK files, so I did some tests.

First of all, SFW -- whether in Photoshop or Illustrator -- will only create RGB JPEGs (and GIFs), even though there are such things as CMYK JPEGs. This, of course, makes perfect sense.

Second, it appears that SFW makes the CMYK to RGB conversion using whatever working space you've chosen under color settings. One big clue was Illustrator's SFW, which allows the embedding of an ICC profile. By opening the resulting JPEGs in Photoshop, I confirmed that the embedded profile was whatever I used as my Illustrator RGB workspace.

If that's true, then all that stuff I wrote above really doesn't matter very much. SFW is doing the conversion for you, and you have the same degree of control as you would if you converted to RGB before saving -- namely your choice of RGB working space.

I did some SFW comparisons using a CMYK file consisting of the SWOP color bars. I used the Web Graphics Defaults color settings (which uses sRGB and SWOP coated as the RGB and CMYK workspaces, respectively). I must say my JPEGs and GIFs -- viewed not only in PS but also in IrfanView and a couple of browsers -- look pretty good as far as color is concerned.

So, what's the story with your files? Beats me. I noticed you used a lot of green in your map. Perhaps you picked one of those few shades that CMYK can pull off but RGB can't? I'm working with IL 10.0.3. Perhaps we have a situation unique to version 9.0? (Not very likely.)

I'm sorry I haven't been very much help. But you helped me learn something in the process.

=-= Harron =-=

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Here's how color settings can affect JPEGs you create from CMYK art using Save For Web:

Example 1 <http://pws.prserv.net/hkahome/photo_gallery/Misc/test-WebGrDef.jpg> is an SFW JPEG out of IL 10.0.3 with "Web Graphics Defaults" as the color settings -- i.e., sRGB space, Relative Colorimetric intent, Black Point Compensation on.

Example 2 <http://pws.prserv.net/hkahome/photo_gallery/Misc/test-WGmut-percep-nobpc.jpg> is an SFW JPEG from the same CMYK original IL art but with some "extreme" custom color settings -- Wide Gamut RGB space, Perceptual intent, no Black Point Compensation.

In neither case did I embed an ICC profile.

=-= Harron =-=

[Alexander_Kogan.@adobeforums.com]

Hi, Harron!

I've been busy the last two days, didn't have time to check on the thread. Wow, you've don a lot of investigation work :)

See <http://www.fact-index.com/m/me/megabyte.html> .




I got the point, thanks :)

See <http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/4118.html> .




Yes, I'm aware that CMYK gamut has colors that can't be reproduced on RGB monitors, but to tell you the truth, I haven't had a chance to face such thing on print, though I know that RGB>CMYK cyan doesn't look at all like "real life" cyan.

Maybe, the shift I'm getting is, as you say, due to this small part of gamut?.. Don't know, have to check out the values.

First of all, SFW -- whether in Photoshop or Illustrator -- will only
create RGB JPEGs (and GIFs), even though there are such things as CMYK
JPEGs. This, of course, makes perfect sense.




Yes, it would be strange if it produced a CMYK Jpeg that no browser can read :) Also, I suppose it's because of the RGB output that I don't have any color shifts when I don't color manage or have the Web Defaults CM instead of Prepress one (which, as you say, makes perfect sense, too).

I'll try to post an example of the particular color shift I got (it wasn't with the map, BTW). Though, the last time I tried, it seemed like the Windows screen capture didn't look like what I saw on the screen when pasted in PS. Can't remember if I color managed it when posting, though. It would be very stupid of me.

Will continue tomorrow, I'm terribly tired and it's 1:10am here (not necessarily in this order) :D