PitStop Pro 10 - Grayscale Conversion

[Hunt]

Our shop has recently upgraded to PitStop Pro 10 and we are experiencing some issues regarding color conversion of customer provided PDFs. Many of these files arrive in color, usually RGB as they are generated by customers out of Word or Publisher, and are going to press as grayscale/black, so they must be converted before being sent to our CTP area.

In our previous version of PitStop the generic actions (Convert color to gray and keep black text, for instance) accomplished this task very well, with only minor issues to clean up after running the action. These same actions in PS10 are causing several troubling issues for production. The primary one's we are experiencing are:
- white (or zero color) backgrounds are converted to 1% gray
- placed images within the PDF, color or grayscale, pick up lots of artifacts in the images that were not visible before converting, and were not detectable with the Inspector.

Using the Edit Image tool to convert each image (to grayscale) in Photoshop, then running the PS action (for remaining text and graphics) does not cause the same issue, but is very time consuming for our production volume and workflow. Anyone experiencing these same issues?

 

[mattbeals]

It's a combination of the ICC profiles in PitStop's color management and the rendering intent. It's kind of a long standing issue. Best way to "convert" vector objects is to use the remap color action. Raster images you'll have to tinker with the color management settings. But some artifacts would not be unexpected..

I need to update the color management info here: Pitstop color management

 

[RobC]

We've been unhappy with Pistop's color conversion since Pitstop 6. In Pitstop 4 and 5 we had it nailed and then they (Enfocus or Adobe?) changed something?

We've been using the LittleCMS engine option with better results but not really good enough to avoid manual intervention. We run an action list to remap the colors we can (0,0,0 RGB to 100 Black for example).
We can do RGB->CMYK well enough but RGB->grayscale is still not good enough, it either comes out too dark or too light.

Matt Beals pointed us in the direction of PDFToolbox Server for color conversion and it's tremendously better for handling office document color conversion "automagically". It also comes as an Acrobat Plug-in.

Link to PDF Toolbox

 

[pacart]

We don't like pitstops color conversion either, for the most part i use the touch up object tool that is standard in acrobat, the image opens up in photoshop then i do what i need to do save and the image updates in the pdf when i go back to acrobat. But sometimes that doesn't work, in that situation i will open the pdf file in photoshop and crop down to the image i want, do what i need to do and end up placing the image over the top of the original when i place the file into indesign- we don't print out of acrobat. For vector images i use the global color change, it works great.

 

[mattbeals]

Pacart, give pdfToolbox a try. I think you will be happy with the conversions.

 

[Hunt]

It's a combination of the ICC profiles in PitStop's color management and the rendering intent. It's kind of a long standing issue. Best way to "convert" vector objects is to use the remap color action. Raster images you'll have to tinker with the color management settings. But some artifacts would not be unexpected..

I need to update the color management info here: Pitstop color management

I think your advice got us on the right track Matt. We are currently in CS4/5 and Acrobat 9 on Mac platform, though we do dabble in PC. I got together with our IT/Desktop guru and we walked through the procedures in your link, updated and created new (gray) profiles, and applied everything through Bridge. We still had to update the profiles in PitStop prefs, and after that it appears the PitStop color conversion actions are working much better - cleaner blacks/grays, less artifacts, and no %&@3#! 1% gray background screens. Still a few tests to run... so far, so good... and it only took about 30 minutes to get everything in place. Thanx!!!

And thanx for everyone else's responses, too. The Acrobat Touch Up Object tool is very handy in many situations. I'll look into PDF Toolbox as well.

 

[mattbeals]

Happy to help. There are a few things to update. You can use the Adobe CMM now with PitStop rather than LittleCMS. With the Adobe CMM you can also use BPC. In PitStop 10 you can sync PitStop with Acrobat, but not sync PitStop with Bridge. So it's a two step process.

But after all that hassle and a half hour I'm glad it's working better. I'd suggest you try pdfToolbox. It's a hell of a lot easier in pdfToolbox. *A LOT* easier... I had about 53 hits today on the site for the CMS info. There are thousands of hits just on PitStop's color management on my sites. It's crazy that it's still this much of a problem. But the info is slowly working its way out and I'm glad it helps.

 

[the_brain]

I think your advice got us on the right track Matt. We are currently in CS4/5 and Acrobat 9 on Mac platform, though we do dabble in PC. I got together with our IT/Desktop guru and we walked through the procedures in your link, updated and created new (gray) profiles, and applied everything through Bridge. We still had to update the profiles in PitStop prefs, and after that it appears the PitStop color conversion actions are working much better - cleaner blacks/grays, less artifacts, and no %&@3#! 1% gray background screens. Still a few tests to run... so far, so good... and it only took about 30 minutes to get everything in place. Thanx!!!

And thanx for everyone else's responses, too. The Acrobat Touch Up Object tool is very handy in many situations. I'll look into PDF Toolbox as well.

Hi Hunt,

So you say it worked fine in older versions of PitStop Pro? Did you upgrade these versions to the version you're now referring to? Are you still using the same ICC profiles as previously?
As far as I can see nothing has changed substantially when it comes a normal RGB to grayscale conversion, so it can only be the CMM settings. Hence my question if you were still using the same profiles when encountering these issues with the new PitStop Pro.

If this is the case, please send all details to Enfocus support ([email protected]) so we can find out why this happened.

It indeed looks like different profiles caused this behavior and maybe a different color engine was used. I'm glad it works now, but I would still like to find the source of the issue.

thank you for your feedback.

Bert