what does this mean?

[rande]

Inspector>
base color space icc profile
icc profile name u.s. web coated (swop)v2
alternate color space cmyk


why is cmyk an alt crl spc.?

Is it better to have them: base color space as cmyk?

Also I have rgb's in this. What is the best way to handle those?
Open in Photoshop or use actions:
convert to cmyk or
In prefight:
cmyk v3.0?

thanks

[the_brain]

Inspector>
base color space icc profile
icc profile name u.s. web coated (swop)v2
alternate color space cmyk


why is cmyk an alt crl spc.?

Is it better to have them: base color space as cmyk?

Also I have rgb's in this. What is the best way to handle those?
Open in Photoshop or use actions:
convert to cmyk or
In prefight:
cmyk v3.0?

thanks

It seems you have an ICC based colorspace which is built from a specific ICC Profile. This is different then ICC tagging an DeviceCMYK image with a target ICC Profile. that's why PitStop shows that the alternate CS is CMYK.

It would keep it as it is or if you're CMM prefs are set correctly do a CMYK to CMYK conversion. So that the target is correct for you workflow.

RGB images is a different story. Some people want to keep the images RGB as long as possible, because of the larger gamut. other want to convert to CMYK immediately. PitStop Pro/Server 08 have intermediate color settings. They are not bad, but not the best in the market. up to you to decide if the PitStop conversion meets your requirements.
If the CMM prefs are set correct, you can get good results.

There are of course also other high end apps for color standardization and conversion.

Basically it all depends on the workload and your specs.

cheers,
Bert

[dkelly]

All 'complex' colorspaces in PDF have to have an alternate colorspace. This allows a dumb device to display the element even if it can't understand/render the complex colorspace.

Complex PDF colorspaces include Indexed, ICCBased, Pattern, DeviceN and Separation. Simple colorspaces include all of the device dependent ones: DeviceGray, DeviceRGB and DeviceCMYK. The alternate colorspace has to be a 'simple' colorspace.

To make it easier to understand, let's take the ICCBased colorspace from the original question. It sounds like the element was a CMYK image that had been tagged with a CMYK ICC profile. The alternate colorspace is simply DeviceCMYK. If the software/device understands ICC profiles, it will convert the raw image data through the profile -- if not, it will display the raw image data unmodified.