Fiery "Use Embedded Profile" setting...

[kdw75]

Can someone explain to me if we should be turning this on by default? We had always left it off on our digital press, but recently had a case where the pictures in a customers file were drab, and I turned this setting on, and they immediately brightened up, and looked fantastic. So I am thinking I should always keep this on now.

 

[jrsc]

We leave it on. What it does is if the images in the file are tagged with a color profile it uses that to convert to the output profile. If you don't have it on it will assign the profile you picked in the fiery color settings. If that is different than the actual profile of the image it will change the colors from what they should be.

 

[kdw75]

Ok. That sounds like it would almost always be desirable, so it is surprising they don't have it defaulted to on.

 

[arossetti]

We leave it on, we try to honor any embedded profiles that the customer sends in.

 

[NathanD]

Unfortunately, the customer may not know they are embedding a profile and furthermore, may not have that intent for output. I.e. if the customer's color settings are set to the creative suite defaults for CMYK (US Web Coated SWOP), and you honor that profile, what you should get is a simulation of a SWOP output. This is great if SWOP is what the customer intended. However, depending on your paper/ink/toner/press combination, it's likely not making use of the full gamut of your digital press. Is the result that your customer desires from your digital press really a simulation of a web offset press on publication grade 3 paper (SWOP)?

In a lot of proofing scenarios and in offset facilities, printers ignore embedded CMYK profiles. In a proofing scenario, this means the file is treated as a GRACoL2006 (or whatever spec the printer is printing to) file and converted from GRACoL2006 to the proofer's output profile. In terms of file prep for plating, when the CMYK file goes through the prepress RIP, there are no color conversions. This is key because if the printer honors the embedded profile but then needs to convert to their in house standard (GRACoL or other), unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions can occur. If more printers had DeviceLink profiles and color servers to better handle these conversions, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, they do not. Therefore, ignoring embedded profiles safeguards you against unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions and forces all incoming files to be treated as if they were designed for your output condition.

Just wanted to throw it out there that there are cases in which you don't want to honor embedded profiles.

 

[jrsc]

Unfortunately, the customer may not know they are embedding a profile and furthermore, may not have that intent for output. I.e. if the customer's color settings are set to the creative suite defaults for CMYK (US Web Coated SWOP), and you honor that profile, what you should get is a simulation of a SWOP output. This is great if SWOP is what the customer intended. However, depending on your paper/ink/toner/press combination, it's likely not making use of the full gamut of your digital press. Is the result that your customer desires from your digital press really a simulation of a web offset press on publication grade 3 paper (SWOP)?

Not true. The embedded profiles are what the color has already been converted to. So you aren't losing gamut when you use the embedded profile, the customer already lost that when they used that profile. If you ignore it you are assigning different colors based on what your default source profile is on your rip (not the destination profile, it still does a conversion, just form the wrong starting values). The idea workflow in today's digital press world is to receive all files with RGB colors that are icc tagged. That will give you the best color gamut, the most consistent color between devices, and the most versatility on use of the files. Color management in adobe products and fiery rips works pretty well if people would just leave it on and stop trying to manually convert colors. The only part where it's somewhat screwed up is the pdf output presets. You should never use the press quality preset when making a pdf, especially for digital printing. It converts all your colors to the default cmyk and doesn't tag anything so not only do you lose color gamut but the printer has no idea what profiles you are using so they have no idea how to convert the colors for their press.

 

[kdw75]

Unfortunately, the customer may not know they are embedding a profile and furthermore, may not have that intent for output. I.e. if the customer's color settings are set to the creative suite defaults for CMYK (US Web Coated SWOP), and you honor that profile, what you should get is a simulation of a SWOP output. This is great if SWOP is what the customer intended. However, depending on your paper/ink/toner/press combination, it's likely not making use of the full gamut of your digital press. Is the result that your customer desires from your digital press really a simulation of a web offset press on publication grade 3 paper (SWOP)?

In a lot of proofing scenarios and in offset facilities, printers ignore embedded CMYK profiles. In a proofing scenario, this means the file is treated as a GRACoL2006 (or whatever spec the printer is printing to) file and converted from GRACoL2006 to the proofer's output profile. In terms of file prep for plating, when the CMYK file goes through the prepress RIP, there are no color conversions. This is key because if the printer honors the embedded profile but then needs to convert to their in house standard (GRACoL or other), unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions can occur. If more printers had DeviceLink profiles and color servers to better handle these conversions, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, they do not. Therefore, ignoring embedded profiles safeguards you against unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions and forces all incoming files to be treated as if they were designed for your output condition.

Just wanted to throw it out there that there are cases in which you don't want to honor embedded profiles.

Very helpful. In our case, it seems that honoring the embedded RGB profile is important, but the CMYK profile is probably best left off, as we run GRACOL2006 on our digital press, and almost all customers send in SWOP.

 

[kdw75]

Not true. The embedded profiles are what the color has already been converted to. So you aren't losing gamut when you use the embedded profile, the customer already lost that when they used that profile. If you ignore it you are assigning different colors based on what your default source profile is on your rip (not the destination profile, it still does a conversion, just form the wrong starting values). The idea workflow in today's digital press world is to receive all files with RGB colors that are icc tagged. That will give you the best color gamut, the most consistent color between devices, and the most versatility on use of the files. Color management in adobe products and fiery rips works pretty well if people would just leave it on and stop trying to manually convert colors. The only part where it's somewhat screwed up is the pdf output presets. You should never use the press quality preset when making a pdf, especially for digital printing. It converts all your colors to the default cmyk and doesn't tag anything so not only do you lose color gamut but the printer has no idea what profiles you are using so they have no idea how to convert the colors for their press.

With our clients that are willing to listen, I always tell them to save as a PDF X4 2008 or 2010, and embed the GRACOL 2006 rendering intent.

 

[Correct Color]

There really isn't all that much difference between Gracol 2006 and SWOP, truth be known. Lots of people push Gracol as some kind of Holy Grail, but the difference between it and SWOP is really only basically the difference between sheetfed and web printing.

That's the reason you can often use Gracol as an input and not get into too much trouble. In most cases there just isn't going to be that much of a shift when you incorrectly assign it as the expected CMYK incoming space to a file that was created in SWOP.

However, that doesn't make doing so correct or even desirable. If a file has an embedded color profile, that means that's the color working space that file is in. Every pixel value in that file relates to that color space and not to any other color space. End of story. Not honoring it and assigning some other profile is exactly the same as assigning a wrong profile in Photoshop.

Always honor embedded profiles.

Always.



Mike Adams
Correct Color

 

[arossetti]

Unfortunately, the customer may not know they are embedding a profile and furthermore, may not have that intent for output. I.e. if the customer's color settings are set to the creative suite defaults for CMYK (US Web Coated SWOP), and you honor that profile, what you should get is a simulation of a SWOP output. This is great if SWOP is what the customer intended. However, depending on your paper/ink/toner/press combination, it's likely not making use of the full gamut of your digital press. Is the result that your customer desires from your digital press really a simulation of a web offset press on publication grade 3 paper (SWOP)?

In a lot of proofing scenarios and in offset facilities, printers ignore embedded CMYK profiles. In a proofing scenario, this means the file is treated as a GRACoL2006 (or whatever spec the printer is printing to) file and converted from GRACoL2006 to the proofer's output profile. In terms of file prep for plating, when the CMYK file goes through the prepress RIP, there are no color conversions. This is key because if the printer honors the embedded profile but then needs to convert to their in house standard (GRACoL or other), unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions can occur. If more printers had DeviceLink profiles and color servers to better handle these conversions, this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, they do not. Therefore, ignoring embedded profiles safeguards you against unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions and forces all incoming files to be treated as if they were designed for your output condition.

Just wanted to throw it out there that there are cases in which you don't want to honor embedded profiles.

I'm confused; you say that you should convert SWOP to GRACoL but then say you shouldn't do unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions. If you convert from a smaller gamut to a larger gamut, ie swop to gracol, you do not achieve that larger gamut.

 

[AngusPady]

I think everyone is wrong...

The question is what do you do in your standard file-to-plate-to-press workflow? Do you convert all files into one standard colour space? If so then do the same in your proofing workflow. Remember you are trying mimic what happens when you send a file to press.

Here's an example. File has an embedded is SWOP profile and you press simulation is set up to match GRACoL. If you send a SWOP file to your press it will look, well wrong, but you want to mimic that "wrong" on your proofer. The idea of proofing is to match what happens when you send a file to press, not to create a perfect match to the original. I hope that makes sense. Ideally, customers should be converting all files before they send to press and proofer, into the final press profile. But that rarely happens. I do not honour the embedded bcs in most workflows you do not convert the customers incoming PDF. Most prepress shops simply send whatever is received to CTP with plate curves.

With RGB I always reserve the embedded bcs I want the output to match the visual representation on screen. Adobe in Adobe out.

Angus Pady

 

[Odyssey]

This thread timing is Spooky - I've recently lost my main litho/digital supplier (liquidation) and yesterday was looking at a new one who has a new Ricoh ProC5100. I had them run a sample of a job that was previously done on a Xerox docutech. I habitually output PDF/X4 using Europe Prepress 3 (I'm in the UK) and Fogra 29/39.
Comparing the results, the Ricoh looks about 5-7% too heavy, more contrasty with less smooth grad tones. In litho terms I would have altered dot gain to compensate.
The supplier is keen to help but has only had the machine a couple of months and is basically using default /automated settings. I was wanting to know if there was a recommended or custom ICC profile that output PDFs could be exported with to achieve better results. Don't get me wrong the results are OK, the customer certainly won't notice, but I want to make sure the quality is as good as it can possibly be.

Having spent quite some time on the phone being passed around various departments of Ricoh without success (I can now 'hear' people glazing over) and finally managed to contact the installation/maintenance engineer who was honest enough to admit he didn't know, but suggested I talk to EFI about whether the RIP was a custom one for this machine, and was it possible to profile it to suit. Looking at the EFI website, they will sell you a 'profiling kit' but I doubt the supplier will spring for it. Ironically EFI's UK office is only about 4 miles away, I'll try them in the morning . . .

Having occasionally run prepress at a couple of printers as well as asking potential suppliers about their workflows and colour management, I've been amazed at how many just use the default Adobe SWOP setting for sheetfed, screen, inkjet and digital - also bearing in mind that US black is 'warmer' than european black.

 

[mikestr]

You're all correct. For proofing you should uncheck the box, as the purpose is to force assignment of the target press profile so the customer knows how the job will print, ugly or beautiful, and so corrective action can be taken in time. Sometimes that action is simply conversion of the file to the reference profile, or it could be retouching. But that's for proofing. For production print the box should be checked, but this doesn't mean that the customer will be happy either. If the artwork was prepped on an uncalibrated monitor and never proofed (with the appropriate press profile as reference) the customer will have no way of knowing how the job will turn out. (Of course, on a cut-sheet digital press it's easy to make a press proof, but that's rather late in the game.) But at least one can say, when embedded profiles are used, that the job was technically interpreted according to the customer spec, so you can blame him when he's unhappy. Whether that is a sound business strategy I leave to the reader. My view is that it is always best to be proactive and help the customer to understand the process.

By the way, it is not always best practice to normalize all RGB elements to a standard CMYK space (e.g., GRACoL, SWOP3) prior to printing, as many digital presses have a considerably larger output gamut that could be harnessed for better reproduction of those images. Likewise for spot colors. This, along with monitor calibration and proofing, can be topic of discussion with customers.

 

[cyanman]

My take on this is that if you do not choose to consider the incoming profile, you will ignore the existing profile and perform the equivalent of a Photoshop "assign profile" on the incoming file rather than "converting to" your desired profile. Depending on your file and how you handle it in prepress this may or may not be an issue for you.

So generally a good thing IMHO.

However this is not without a downside in some workflows. The particular time I have seen this as problematic is when the artwork has a RBG gray scale elements. Because the conversion to your desired RGB profile in the RIP process will by definition change the RGB values, the grays will no longer print using only black toner, and thus your page will transition from black click to a color click.

 

[NathanD]

I'm confused; you say that you should convert SWOP to GRACoL but then say you shouldn't do unnecessary CMYK-CMYK conversions. If you convert from a smaller gamut to a larger gamut, ie swop to gracol, you do not achieve that larger gamut.

I didn't say you should convert from SWOP to GRACoL. When you do not honor embedded profiles, there is no conversion from SWOP to GRACoL. The SWOP intention gets thrown out and the CMYK values simply get passed through and then...

..in an ICC based proofing environment, GRACoL is "assigned" and the CMYK file transformed through the GRACoL A2B LUT into Lab. From Lab, the B2A LUT of the Proofer Profile is used to go from Lab to the CMYK of the proofer.

..in prepress, in a standard file-to-plate-to-press workflow, as Angus mentioned, the CMYK would simply get passed through to CTP with curves.