Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

jardo

Well-known member
Hi Everyone,
Is there a way to permanately turn off color management in the Indesign and Illustrator CS2&3 applications. We do our color management in Prinergy and want ALL customer files to come in, with CM turned off. I know that you can go in and turn off CM in the Color Settings preference, but it always, somehow gets turned back on. We think that it gets turned on from a customer files coming in, with the CM turned on, then it automatically changes our preference to be ON. Is there a way to disable the CM by taking out a plugin, or drilling into the applications "package" contents? Thnaks.
Jeffrey J.
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

I don't think there is, because It can be set at the application level as well as the document level (which I believe is where you're having trouble).

You can set the default of the application:
launch the app, do not create or open a file, set the CM to "Off".

But, like you said, any files that come in with it checked will have it on.

We gotten used to having to check for it here whenever we preflight a file.


It's one of the features that they built in.



cheers,
David
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

What do you mean by "turning off Color Management"?

Given that proper viewing of any asset requires that it be rendered
against the intended "output intent", authoring software MUST use
ICC-based color management techniques to put ANY pixels on a screen.
This is ESPECIALLY true on Mac SO X or Vista, where the entire OS is
color managed.


Leonard
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & C

Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & C

Well, it's actually not turning it "off" as much as you're letting it pass through the application unchanged.

In most cases, if you turn "on" color management in Indesign, it will make your black type (or for that matter, any black solids) come over as a 4 color screen mix, which is not good in a prepress environment. This is mostly due to the fact that you're not using a device link profile (which, as far as I know, is not possible in most desktop apps).
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

>It's one of the features that they built in.

And one of the features that had me damn near crying like a little girl before I figured it out....along with the "preserve CMYK" check box that doesn't truly preserve all CMYK.
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

that little feature will make your head spin till you know what you're looking for, no doubt!


cheers,
David
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

You CAN turn Color Management off within InDesign and Illustrator.

In InDesign under "Edit | Color Settings" specify "Emulate Adobe InDesign 2.0 CMS Off"

In Illustrator under "Edit | Color Settings" specify "Emulate Adobe Illustrator 6.0"
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

OK Brian, then what ICC profile is used to convert RGB to CMYK. And what CMYK profile is it converting to? If you say no profiles because no color management, then I'd say wrong. It is using profiles whether color management is on or off. That's why you can't REALLY turn off color management.

Don
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

I agree with Leonard.

Our software, QuickPrint, turns ON the CM in InDesign when exporting a job to PDF.
Why?
Because;
1. It ensures the destinations output intent is used when flattening
2. It ensures that if a conversion is made, there is some element of control over how it is done.

We don't do this with QuarkXPress because it is not so easy to control the output intent when exporting.

Experience shows, even if something like Prinergy is used to manage the colour, targeting for the correct profile in InDesign is really good practice.
 
Re: Force "NO" Color Management in Indesign & Illustrator CS2 & CS3

We do a lot of publication work and require that all files be supplied as cmyk without color management turned on. This is an early binding workflow and works well for us. Many of our customers recieve ads from many sources, not all of which are well versed in color management. We recommend that they view their images in Photoshop with our press profile or SWOP ver 2 when doing color correction.

David Mounteney
 
Still no answer for this?

We just got burned on a catalog thats been run once before because "North American General Purpose CMS" became enabled by a customer file on one of our machines, again. We normally have "Emulate Indesign 2.0 CMS off" in our color settings and run into this same problem about every 2 months. Is there a fix yet?
 
I've got a question along the colour (Aussie spelling) management line. We are trying to get consistent profiles set up in our department with pitstop, cs2 applications etc running the same profile, but when the files go thru prinergy, does it apply us web coated to anything that hasn't got a profile or everything?
 
We handle it this way:

Use whatever color settings you normally use, but don't turn it off in color settings because you want to know if your customer is tagging their files. I assume, based on the OP's question, that all is desired is that there is no CM at output. To do this, simply create a print preset with INDD set to "No Color Management" in the CM tab of your print dialog. This will also add the benefit of allowing you to use CM at output if you get a tagged file and want to convert to your workspace on occasion, because you will now have two options in the CM tab...No Color Management and/or Postscript Printer Determines Color, (which will give you the option of either converting both vector and raster or just raster by checking the Preserve CMYK box.
 
what about emulate illustrator 6 settings and preserve CMYK numbers? I've been looking some more information about this for awhile, and this post is actually containing more than one questions.
There were still some comments in this thread that would be helpful if someone could clarify since they are related to what we are dealing with.

What is the color space that emulate illustrate 6 uses, if any? How does it perform the conversions? I suspect that it only honors the CMYK values that come from Photoshop, but is that all? We use this workflow in illustrator so that we do not mess up the solid blacks, but I am suspicious of how well illustrator preserves those CMYK values, or allows the files to be part of a color management workflow through proofing and plates/press.

More in detail: a file through emulate illustrator 6 settings will be ripped retaining the solid black values. However, when it goes through the proofing workflow (inkjet in our case) it would turn the solid blacks into CMYK. The proofs overall match the press sheet (because the proofs are calibrated to the press sheet), but for certain uniform builds we might need to make plate adjustments to match the proof, or run the densities at a different than usual value.

I think that not honoring a color managed workflow by the use of emulate illustrator 6 settings is the source of the problem, but then again... how else could you retain the purity of the ink (solid blacks and so on)? Device links could do it I guess, but is there another option?
 
mtnman how do you get them to limit ink to printable amounts? You can use pitstop or Acrobat to strip ICC prifiles so you have Device CMYK profiles only, by converting colours but not including profiles. I would not recommend it but it can be done. In older versions Acrobat you can uncheck the box wich says Output intent overrides working spaces, but this would be a bad option as Leonard points out.
 
In older versions Acrobat you can uncheck the box wich says Output intent overrides working spaces, but this would be a bad option as Leonard points out.

Which is why Leonard had that option removed from Acrobat/Reader 9 - and instead we act according to the PDF standard (ISO 32000) as well as the PDF/X, PDF/A and PDF/E standards when it comes to rendering and use of the Output Intent.
 
As the originator os this thread. I have two comments as to why no CM. One, we have a Prinergy system and wanted the customer file to come in and do absolutely nothing but go to Prinergy. I never said that I wasn't using color management in my workflow, I just wanted it off in the desktop apps. Using it as one central point for color management. If you have 9 pre-press guys working three shifts, doing color management to each customer file, it is only asking for chaos and confusion. Easier to say the policy for all customer files is to turn CM off, let Prinergy CM the docs, and be consistent. One of the key elements to good color management, consistancy.

Second, sometimes there is a need to send color management targets through the workflow and I wanted it off, so I could know 100% for sure, that my file was not being affected by the desktop app.
 
Jardo,
If you export to PDF, then you can set the color behavior to "No Color Conversion".

If you print, then in the Color tab of the Print dialogue, use "Let Postscript Printer Determine Colors". This keeps ID from converting anything, but sends information in the Postscript stream that could be utilized to convert colors.

I believe, however, that you can only send one color mode via PostScript. So, any RGB images contained in a document destined for CMYK output might not be converted prettily.
 
Unmanaged colour is a dangerous thing. (Managed = controlled, therefore unmanaged would lead to chaos and confusion, by deffinition)
It should not be impossible to educate 9 people. Yes it is hard work, but having output intents on PDF is a great help to know if the PDFs that we get are prepared for coated or uncoated stock. With everything un-managed you will not know if your CMYK values are for a particular output.
(did have a discussion before with Leonard on this point as I would have liked that all profiles based on the same measuring data should be considered equal, but know how to break the rules if necessary, to get the correct results…Â*moving towards device links, so that I get the same result without breaking rules)
 
Lukas,
I think Jardo is looking for a couple of things:

1 You have to be able to get profiling targets out untouched

2 It sounds like he's handling color in other places, therefore would like ID to leave it alone

It's just as important in color management to be able to not convert something.
 

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