How are ICCs going on design?

[Ulrich]

I do not think, there will come something with that you not know already, but sure I will do, tomorrow, „my shop“ is closed now for today, sitting in the kitchen at home... ;-)

Thanks to Gordo!
All his knowledge and expirience is always welcome and appriciated!

Sometimes it is very important to be confronted with a more distanced and one step more „abstracted“ view to the things. The more you are involved so very near...

 

[gordo]

Gordo, your idea is really cool, but you're retired now, right?

About 95% retired and just 5% tired. ;-)

 

[chriscozi]

Anyway, you're all right. Software houses are there primarily to make profits.
Very few do it in the right spirit - and 99% of the time they are acquired by the big fishes.
We should come together and collaborate to create something really useful to eliminate problems.
Gordo, your idea is really cool, but you're retired now, right?

Maybe we should let Serif (Affinity) know 'what we think'.
Ulrich, they are a European company, could you contact them?
Sure enough Adobe would fall all over themselves to implement a solution if Affinity does it first.
LOL

 

[abc]

You are going to love PDF/X6.
Output Intents can be page based, not document based.
Interested to see what this looks like in Indesign output settings.

 

[Dario]

Output Intents can be page based, not document based.

Thankfully, I don't work in books publishing anymore - just single page graphics for packaging.

 

[Ulrich]

You are going to love PDF/X6.

how many years that pipeline is long now? (i remember an "secret" anouncement from Olaf Drümmer/Callas felt more than 5 years ago...)

Great feature single page OI´s. For packaging might be yes but books and brochures...?

I am curios to the recommandations to handle that then...


...

Ulrich, could you kindly specify what kind of instructions you gave them?

First of all i want to remember to the meaning of the word colorMANAGEMENT:

It does not (!!!) mean to the designer that they just have to load/use a setting and he is prepared with them for all times...

it means that the handling of color is to manage and it can (not must) be neccessary to do it differently from job to job, but to make a decision for this and that makes a little understanding of the basics neccessary...

It is not possible to work whithout colormanagement in Indesign and Photoshop ("switch off"/simulated Indesign 2.0) means nothing else that the CMYK-colorspace is set to the SWOPwebCoatedv2.ICC-profile, because that is default AFAIR...
(So, if you are using in Photoshop e.g. with CMS "switched off" a mode changing from RGB to CMYK, you will use that profile separation and colorspace.)

The using of ICC-profiles is an essential part of color management, their naming is mostly not helpful for designers...


The situation for what i had saved and send these settings is this:

Only(!) uncoated stocks sheetfed offset

Four Designers working with Indesign each on two stations (home/office), changing old and creating new files with "brand" colors (same logos and vectors on the first and last page in about 20 brochures per year)

Flattening in Indesign is not an issue (very seldom there might be an exception today in 2021...), so for that i use PDF/x-1 standard, because all the neccesary separations for print are finished and the designer has a real WYSIWYG Preview in AcrobatPro with in the PDF-Export:

Now he is able to check himself finding in the Acrobat Preview 100%K Text ist still 100%K (and not e.g. 67-56-54-97 CMYK) and his green is separated with 42-0-89-0 CMYK e.g. in every job because the export started from the same source (document-CMYK) as destination-CMYK.

He does not have to care about finally will happen later interpretations/conversions from different tagged source profiles to some objects as it would/could happen in PDF/x-4.

(Although it is possible to work with that standard reliable too, but just for an example: Think about the difference regarding the overprint-attribute given - or got - to a ICC-based object and a Device-cmyk-object and what you will see in the preview in Acrobat in a PDF/x-1 and in a PDF/x-4 file...)

Especially if the user/designer is not sure about colormanagement, it is just more safer to work with just one cmyk-profile and only one ICC-profile as OI (outputIntent) in the written PDF.
Yes, it is more work to separate PSD files (pictures) in CMYK before placing in indesign, but they are already used to this method working on the gradiation curves in PSD and sometimes it is already neccesary to work with a cmyk file, e.g. the edge of a picture should go into a same colored vector in the layout. Try this in RGB...

By the way: For pictures i recommend RI (Rendering Intent) perzeptive to keep more drawing in a separation with a remarkable smaller colorspace as the source as uncoated is compared with coated or coming from any RGB, but for logos and vector RI relative colorimetric will lead to the possible nearest color, Indesign allows you to difference the RI for different objects, but this is really too much for a "beginner"...)
(edit: sorry, former absolute here was wrong of course...)


You will find the settings here (wetransfer till may 26..., too big to place it here...), explanations in the 7-page PDF are unfortunately in German Language (and please forgive: i am not a designer...)

Merkblatt Settings Oktoberdruck Uncoated.zip

First you habe to place the ICC profile into the recommended-folder, then load the .csf file in the colormanagement dialogue in Indesign, use the joboptions for PDF/x-1 Export (transparencies will be flattened...)

and check your document transparency colorspace is set to document-cmyk

before acting with the settings, you will find them second entry above the colormanagement-settings in the menue.

Think about the simple principle here: Source -> Destination (profiles) should be the same here if you have to make a decision by placing objects in the layout:

ASSIGN the Uncoated profile means unchanged using of the separation/CMYK-values in the placed object in this layout-context.

CONVERT means changing from a (different) source into the document CMYK-colorspace, what leads you might be from CMYK 0-50-50-0 to CMYK 1-47-51-0 or something like that.

Both make sense sometimes, it is depending from the situation, YOU ARE THE MANAGER!



At least: Keep the church in the village, all above written make sense for Offset when proofed simulations (hard or soft) comes with the job. There is also left the whitepoint difference bigger than DELTA E 3 or not between profiles one and stock paper... ,-)

 

[Ulrich]

Maybe we should let Serif (Affinity) know 'what we think'.
Ulrich, they are a European company, could you contact them?
Sure enough Adobe would fall all over themselves to implement a solution if Affinity does it first.

Chris:

Serif is just geografically located in Europe, politically a few more british thinking and feeling people had decided that their current chief should manage to be a single part of/in europe...


I had load their publisher late, just one week ago:

Might be, it is wise, clever and smart from their side to keep the CMS much more simpler than in Indesign as they had done till yet in the current version, but they should add an opportunity for saving and sending that settings, i did not find some there...?

It is really simple, but it works, you just had to add the profile you want and chose a standard for export.

Just, that does not works satisfying with old Type 1 (postscript) - fonts, by choosing PDF/x-1 or PDF/x-4 standard for export the text will be changed to curves. (You can print that of course, but a newspaper-printing office had complained about the time is need for generating the bitmaps in their RIP...)


i noticed also, that a transparent spotcolor value of e.g. 50% will be flattened into cmyk with PDF/x-1 export, PDF/x-4 works fine with that...


I am not bashing Serif! You get a lot for small money and you can work for professional purpose with it! Much better than with ragtime or scribus...

 

[abc]

how many years that pipeline is long now? (i remember an "secret" anouncement from Olaf Drümmer/Callas felt more than 5 years ago...)

PDF 2.0 and PDF/X-6 are both published specs by ISO.
Once Indesign supports PDF/X-6 output, we can expect some more fun in the Industry I expect.

The idea of the different output intents (so I am told) is that you can have a cover and text in one PDF. The Cover could be on coated stock, the Text could be uncoated, and you can now represent this with the correct output intents.

As most files were not even built correctly when there was one output intent per document, it should be fun.

 

[Ulrich]

That will come much too late:

The greater the confusion, the better the entertainment...

...just think about the shrinking offset going more and more to the digital printshops with toner based laser printing!

LOL

Edit: Sorry folks, cant stop thinking about:
I would not be surprised that idea comes from the girls and guys from Alwan, Zepra and GMG, counting already the monetary input for the neccessary updates ...

And is Text not mostly just black? I mean for a better contrast by reading and so...

 

[Dario]

As most files were not even built correctly when there was one output intent per document, it should be fun.

I REALLY TOTALLY AGREE with that!!

 

[Dario]

a not-really-engaging poll