do you convert to CMYK before sending to RIP?

[PineyBob]

Thanks all for your responses.


I had read that some printers, including some big ones send their files as RGB and let the RIP sort it out and I couldn't figure out why they would do that unless they were a very small shop with no effective colour control. I still can't figure that one out, so for now we're going to continue to convert to CMYK at the point of proofing.

Thanks again for your input.

The theory behind keeping everything RGB and allowing the RIP to manage color is that you want to leep as much color information in a file as far into the production process as possible.

Good Color Management is alot like a good marriage. It takes a lot of work and often a fair amout of trial and error before you get positive results. In the end if done correctly BOTH can be very rewarding.

One of my frustrations when I got started with Color Management is that for so many questions the answer is "It Depends". What works flawlessly in another's shop may fail miserably in yours depending on a variety of factors.

The advice I would give if you think you need better color accuracy is to start at the beginning. If you're doing the creating make sure all the workstations and their softwares had the same default settings, profiles etc. Same as you move through the workflow. Correct profiles (Custom or otherwise) loaded. I always work with a few "Benchmark" files. One that I KNOW what their supposed to look like in addition to the GATF or Altona files.

The digital world essentially assigns numeric values to what us old farts used to do by eye iin the press world years ago. It seems hard but I just keep remembering the X-Acto knife cuts from using Ruby Lith, and overlay after overlay to get a composite negative to strip into a flat or dot etching a separation to add more magenta in in the shadows. Now it's a few mouse clicks and some upfront work and BANG good color.

 

[Blindbo]

The digital world essentially assigns numeric values to what us old farts used to do by eye iin the press world years ago. It seems hard but I just keep remembering the X-Acto knife cuts from using Ruby Lith, and overlay after overlay to get a composite negative to strip into a flat or dot etching a separation to add more magenta in in the shadows. Now it's a few mouse clicks and some upfront work and BANG good color.

I don't consider myself old, nor a fart, but at 51 and having my hands dirty since 10 in everything lithographic (I love saying I used to be a stripper), with my last 18 years in digital printing I can authoritatively state that color especially is still by 'eye' when viewed by one and 'aye' when viewed by many.

For the record, our DocuSp's on iGen4's handle the rgb.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Understanding things is the only way of being sure of what you get. Some people will get OK results most of the time and freaky results every now and again, not because they understand things but because they end up being "lucky" that many vendors use the same basic assumptions, or because they don't have high demands. The tools we have today are much more powerfull that what we had some years back. I look at some books that impressed me before and find them so lifeless and flat today, when I have learned to expect more.
We used to be happy if grass was green and sky was blue… today we want the right green and the right blue. (This is especially noticable if you look at books on art, like for example books on impressionsts printed at different times)

 

[starprintingltd]

Harlequin RIP - sepeations first then sent to RIP. 2 second job

 

[epryser]

This really is a 'it depends' answer!

First, on a Fiery, or a Creo, you can set up Virtual Printers that will enable different work flows.

If your job is ONLY EVER GOING TO BE PRINTED DIGITAL, then keep RGB elements as RGB, because that would use the larger RGB Gamut that you'd never see on an traditional press. There are different settings for RGB on the rips: Adobe1998 (preferred), and more saturated settings too.

If you're 'proofing' for web design, then use sRGB, because that's what sRGB is meant to display.

If you're 'proofing' for a press and plan on only printing a portion digitally, then you can keep RGB elements as RGB, but they can be set up to print like the CMYK flow is set to do ... and that's done 'on the fly' ... select the RGB follows CMYK path selection for that.

If you're only printing digitally, then you should be leaving RGB elements as RGB and mostly using Adobe1998 as the RGB setting as this is the standard. The other settings are dark, less dark, and even less dark, otherwise known as 2.1, 1.8 and sRGB.

Hope this helps.