Convertion to CMYK thru Indd

[rande]

Sorry labeled my other post wrong.
I'm curious what others are doing.
I normally open all RGBs in PS and convert; but I have a job with hundreds of photo.
I ran a test with RGB pict in Indd CS3 and the same pict converted in PS.
Made a PS file and Distilled it. In Acrobat 7 the RGB was converted automatically out of Indd
and looks better than the PS converted file.
CM in Indd is custom
RGB 1998
CMYK US web coated (swop) v2
RGB and CMYK : convert to working space
Is all this right and is that the right way of doing this?
thanks

 

[Damo77]

When you say it "looks better than the PS converted file", how are you judging that? In print, or on screen?

 

[rande]

I went ahead with it because it looked good on screen. In my test the PS file looked washed out.
The proofs looked good. They're a richer color.
What color management setups are right for the adobe suite apps?

 

[rande]

also when opening a clients job do you leave doc as is or adjust to my settings.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

We have for years been placing RGB in InDesign and reccomend that workflow. What one has to be aware of is that you have two choices of workflow.
Either you will have to limit your colours in PS (or risk clipping in out of gamut colours) but will get brighter colours as you implement relative colometric rendering. Here even the black point compensation setting will greatly affect the colour conversion.
or
you can use perceptual rendering, wich will scale down out of gamut colours this will be at the expense of full saturation. This may be how you have photoshop configured if you are getting "washed out" images.

 

[rande]

I did have a problem that they thought some of them were to dark.
Now is there a color management setting to help that or do I need to open them from pitstop to lighten the dark ones?
or how should I have PS color settings?
Are we losing anything going to postscritp instead of exporting thrn Indd?

 

[Al Ferrari]

>Are we losing anything going to postscritp instead of exporting thrn Indd?

Yes! Postscript does not transmit color management information.

Al

 

[rande]

To combine these two threads
So everyone is using CM out of Indd to convert there
We did PS files because the Indd cs3 was moving picture boxes that should line up.

It seems I'm getting bits and pieces here and I don't know enough about CM to put it all together. I have avoided it 'til now. I liked the rich color I saw on my test but some RGB images did come out dark.

Okay then, whats the solution? step by step.
If I export out of Indd I run the risk of having boxes not line up
But then I guess I lose my color if I do a postscript file and distill. and the photos come out alittle dark.
And why would I do a PDF-X once its a PDF? I've read alot about it but have avoided it because its hard to manipulate after that and I'm not seeing what its doing.

I have a Indd cs3 doc with RGB's
Indd: color settings:
Custom
RGB 1998
CMYK US Web Coated swop v2
CM:
RGB convert to wkg space
CMYK convert to wkg space
Profile mismatches: all three checked
Adobe (ACE)
Relative Colormetric
Use Black Point Compension

Are these the right settings for Indd and do I use these all the time on every project?

Now Acrobat 7.1.0 (I would double check and fix little things with Pitstop)
(Not sure why I would do a PDF-x)
North Am General Purpose2
RGB Monitor RGB - electr22b4
CMYK U.S sheetfed Coated v2
Grayscale: Dot gain 20%
Output intent overrides wirking spaces
Adobe (ACE)
Use black point compension

Photoshop CS3 10.0.1
RGB monitor RGB - electr22b4
CMYK U.S Web Coated (swop) v2
Gray gamma 2.2
Dot gain 20%
CM polices are all off

What are the setups if I export? do I use convert to destination?

Any thing wrong with what we have?
Thanks

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Why is acrobat viewing sheetfed when others are set to SWOP?
Is SWOP v2 realy 20% dotgain? sounds high
What is Blackpoint compensation in photoshop? Would be reasonable to activate if not you will not maintain contrast/detail in shadows when converting to CMYK in Photoshop.

 

[leonardr]

I would also recommend that you also check to ensure that you are current with InDesign and Acrobat patches and then try direct export once again. I suspect that you will find that the BEST solution of all...

 

[rande]

I'll be honest don't know what the settings should. I've avoided color management over the years.
Everything has been turned off. I've opened RGB directly into PS and converted.
I've never noticed a problem until the other day. Now I'm reading up on it again; such as Bridge syncing the suite programs; is that the way to go? If not 20% what. Is there a bottom line/default we can use or is each job going to take some thought?
If someone could set me straight I would appreciate it.
I think I should change to sheet fed on all. Thats what we do but the description says the ink coverage is 350 I was told we need no more than 320, 340 max. so I don't know.
Is everyone in agreement that making PS files doesn't tranfer the color info? and I should go back to exporting PDFs? What about things shifting? No one has had that problem?

Thanks for the responses by the way.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Just for fun why not try setting Photoshop like indesign and redoing it…you should get identical results, it is the same colour engine. (I'd bet it's the Blackpoint compensation that is the difference)
I would suggest (but I know there are othes who think differently) In Photoshop use the rule to tagg all images. We sava all images as RGB with the ECI RGB. RGB has the advantage of being 75% of the file size plus many filters/adjustment layers will work better (eg HSB and ShadowHighlights).

In InDesign we set to honour all RGB profiles Relative colometric conversion for coated (perceptual for uncoated) and black point compensation. In PhotoShop we work with ECI RGB, in InDesign it can be sometimes more strategic to swith to sRGB for the RGB space as this only affects RGB colours defined in InDesign and UNTAGGED rgb files (wich are most probably sRGB, other files should be tagged).

We export to PDFx1a where we preserve values for CMYK and let indesign convert RGB colours. Note that spot colours must be marked to convert to process unless you intend to print them in process, else you will get problems where spot colours interact with transparent objects.
The output intent will give me the benifit to know if the PDF's were created for coated or uncoated stock.

Also we do have a custom ICC for coated and uncoated. We do teach customers to prefer ISO Coated v2 (ECI) 300% when making files for maximum compatibility between output vendors.

 

[rande]

So you change clients CMYK files to RGB and run them thru Indd cs3 to get the rich color? How do you adjusted for the dark photos. In my experience conversion from RGB to CMYK adds about 10%, anything in the setups to allow for that. I'm not seeing anything in Indd; H
I don't have ECI in Adobe 1998 work okay.
I think I'll need to use Swop, its at 300 and the sheet fed is at 350. The ideal for Gracol is 320 and the most is 340. Do you agree with that?

 

[Sherbert]

I very much doubt changing a CMYK image to RGB will increase the richness.

But, leaving the original as RGB then placing it into indesign should give you the best outcome. Aslong as your settings are correct.

 

[rande]

What about the darkness you get when you convert.
Is that being changed in the PDF/Pitstop? or are RGBs being taken into
Photoshop and lightened then back to Indd to be converted thru the profile?

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

With a press where dotgain curves are correct there is not a problem with darkening images, possibly you are refering to what happens if you do not have black point compensation, this is likely to happen when sending RGB to a printer wich has no colour management. The point of a calibrated workflow is that colour is consistent (though pictures that are badly separated can be fixed sometimes by converting to RGB and applying shadow highlights, then letting InDesign take care of reseparation on export to PDF). It is best not to convert an image to CMYK then back to RGB and to CMYK, but less problematic than printing with too much ink.
As regards the the Gracol profiles I have no experience to say what is a good standard profile. The software used to create the profile is a major player in what the outcome is.

Don't take my word for it. Gang pictures so you see the results. You can also choose to seperate a picture using differnt profiles then print them next to each other and see what the difference is (if it is visible). Note that lower total ink means you can increase your density of ink for each colour, wich in inself will enable the full Gamut for ISO.

 

[rande]

We're gracol compliant so the proofs should show us exactly what its going to look like.
So whats your opinion Open RGBs adjust lighter, keep them RGBs and run thru (swop) profile out of Indd?
Or, I guess I could open them in Photoshop convert to wkg space which should be (swop) and adjust in CMYK or is it better to adjust the RGB file or does it matter?
Either way no one here will care or notice I'm just trying to fine tune things if I can.
Also, if doing a Postscript to distiller file what color info isn't being transfer? Making a postscript file has CM in it,
Profile U.S. Web Coated (swop) v2. and distiller is set up "leave color unchanged".

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I would leave in RGB and covert in InDesign by colourmanaging as I export to PDF. If there are files I need to adjust I would adjust in Photoshop (usually with adjustment layer, just because I am a chicken and want to be able to prove to my customer I enhanced his/her picture). In bright pictures where I see unprintable blues, redss, greens, yellows in essential parts of a picture I would maka a hue saturation layer to tweak these colours (using both gamut warning to show me risk colours and proof colour to verify that the adjustment is an improvement)
I know there are others that would insist that CMYK in PS is the only way to go, the cases where a file has to be converted to CMYK are rare IMO.