Colour management of spot colour channels
Hello
I have some single layer images using cmyk (black only) + Pantone Process Blue U that will eventually be printed on a sheetfed offset press. A ballpark estimate would suffice for this low budget book, so I thought I'd give soft proofing a try. I'm therefore interested in understanding Photoshop's implementation of colour management for spot colour channels so as to have a less vague idea of the approximations this workflow involves.
Moreover, I'm stuck on exporting to pdf to let the client evaluate my conversions of the original rgb scans. Photoshop seems to layer an Euroscale Uncoated v2 overprinting image on top of a spot coloured image whose alternate colour space is "Calibrated RGB". What baffles me is that the pdfs display consistently in Acrobat 8 and 9 but rather differently from the Photoshop document.
Here come my questions:
1) Am I right in saying that these programs still don't support colour profiles involving spots? If so, are Adobe people willing to comment on the relevant intricacies?
2) Which colour profiles and colour conversions do Photoshop and Acrobat use to display such documents?
3) Which software tools will allow me to convert the Photoshop documents to an output profile for hard proofing?
4) Short of alternatives, when only K is needed and as long as each spot colour bears a decent resemblance to a cmy primary, how well will the profiling software deal with a cmyk target printed substituting the inks on press?
Thank you very much for your help.
Giordano
As far as I know …
1) Photoshop uses the Spot setting from your Color Settings (Edit – Color Settings) to display spot channels (and one can use gray-profiles or the K-channel of CMYK-profiles for that); the Solidity one can set manually, but one should bear in mind that even a 100% solid spot channel does not knock out the process channels.
As for the actual physical properties of the color and its mixing with the other colors I’m afraid Photoshop produces a pretty rough simulation – profiles for more than four colors are considerably more complicated and would, if I’m not mistaken, preclude much of Photoshop’s functionality.
2) If you pass unprofiled Files between programs they will be displayed using the programs’ respective Color Settings.
And your screen profile will be employed in the process naturally … but you might want to read up on color management if you want to know more about all that.
As to why the display differs between Acrobat and Photoshop it would appear that Acrobat use the RGB-setting for displaying spots and not an extra setting like Photoshop.
3) Photoshop is capable of separating files – but I may not understand what you’re driving at.
4) Epson-proofers using the latest generation of inks for example have a fairly wide gamut and should be able to simulate a lot of Pantone colors, so you might want to contact your provider to make sure if such a workaround is necessary at all.
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How to convert a spot colour to a spot colour.
I'm curious to know how do i go about converting a spot colour to a spot colour e.g. pms 188 to pms 281?
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Can someone please suggest any quick ways i can do this without the possible need for plugins or extensions, if there is a plugin or extension that can do this please can you list them.Hi daniel013462,
Thank You for posting on the forums, Kindly check the url mentioned below, hope it helps.
http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/color-conversion-ink-management-acrobat.html
Thanks,
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I have recently purchased a Mac computer (updated to Maverick) to go with my Epson Stylus Photo RX500 printer which has given excellent service with my old Windows computer. However, when trying to print pictures or photos via Photoshop Elements 11, the best results I can get are using the Colour Management and Epson Colour controls in the printing options box.
My problem is that after printing the first photo or picture, when I come to print a second, both the Colour Management and Epson Colour Controls are greyed out and showing No Colour Management, The only way I can reset the controls is to shut down the printer and computer and restart.
Could there may be a setting somewhere that I need to adjust please? I have been in touch with Epson and they say that the Epson Colour controls are part of the Photoshop Elements software but a post on the Adobe forum brought no results and I am unable to contact Adobe.
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Hey everyone!
I'm assuming this problem I'm having stems from having colour-calibrated monitors, but let me know if I'm wrong!
To preface, this is the setup I have:
Windows 7
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Here are some video examples:
This is how the colour picker works on my Dell U2410: http://screencast.com/t/lVevxk5Ihk
This is how it works on my Cintiq 12WX: http://screencast.com/t/tdREx4Xyhw9
Main Question
I know the Cintiq's video capture makes the picture look more saturated than the Dell's, but it actually looks fine physically, which is okay. But notice how the Cintiq's colour picker doesn't pick a matching colour. It was actually happening the opposite way for a while (Dell was off, Cintiq was fine), but it magically swapped while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Anyone know what's going on, and how I might fix it?
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Semi-related Question regarding Colour Management
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Going to lay out what I inferred from my experiments regarding colour management in case other noobs like me run into the same frustrations as I did. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - the following are all based on observation.
General Explanation
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Conclusion and Typical Workflow (aka TL;DR)
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Color Settings: I leave it default at North American General Purpose 2, but probably switch from sRGB to AdobeRGB or ProPhoto RGB so I can play in a wider gamut.
Proof Setup: I don't really care about this anymore because I do not soft-proof (ctrl/cmd-Y) in this new workflow.
Let's assume that I have a bunch of photographs I want to post online. RAWs usually come down in the AdobeRGB colour space - a nice, wide gamut that I'll keep while editing. Once I've made my edits, I save the source PSD to prep for export for web.
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Embed Color Profile CHECKED
Convert to sRGB UNCHECKED (really doesn't matter since you're already in the sRGB colour space)
and Preview set to Internet Standard RGB (this is of no consequence - but it will give a preview of what the image will look like in the sRGB space)
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Piers Le SueurThanks Jon,
I've tried both.. trashing pref AND used IDCS3 - created a standard page added some items with spot colours and exported to PDF/X-1a:2001 as you suggested.
I'm still getting the same issue.
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Kind Regards
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