Colour Management from Indesign

How do I colour manage from IDesign to improve my laser copier output accuracy?

First, you need an accurate color profile for the printer ( and laser printers basically need recalibrating every day for really accurate color -- they're sensitve to things like temperature and humididy, and color can change thoughout the day, or even during a long print run), and then you need to turn off color management in the printer control panel, and finally, specify the correct output profile as the destination in the print dialog.

Similar Messages

  • Proper Color Management from Indesign- PDF- Printer

    I can't get my head around this problem and it's been bugging me for a very long time. Maybe you can enlighten me on this?
    Right, I know (heard), that when sending a PDF document into Offset Printer, it shouldn't have embeded ICC profiles (for whatever reasons). Here comes my problem: my Indesign is set to AdobeRGB for RGB and ISO Coated v2 (ECI) for CMYK images. When I create a new document and place in three same TIFF files, but each one with a different ICC profile (AdobeRGB/sRGB/ISO Coated V2) and then export this document into PDF (Acrobat 4 PDF 1.3, no color conversion and no profile embedding (in Output tab)), only the image with AdobeRGB looks exactly like I saw it in Indesign. The image in sRGB is more saturated and the CMYK image is different as well). This is also visible after printing out this document on Xerox 700.
    Now, if I export the same document into PDF and choose to embed the ICC profiles, all three images look pretty much like they do in Indesign (and even as each other, except the CMYK one being a little bit off).
    I looked into color settings in my Acrobat and found a strange thing. The working color profile for RGB space is AdobeRGB (which is correct), but for CMYK it is "Monitor RGB - sRGB IEC.....) - and when I try to change this to ISO Coated V2, hit OK, close Acrobat and open the PDF file again, it is set back to "Monitor RGB - sRGB IEC...." for CMYK color space.
    So now I am confused, why images in PDF file that has no embeded ICC profiles look different from what I see in Indesign - is it normal? Or is my Color settings wrong? What would be the proper settings then?
    And my other question: When I place a grayscale image into Indesign, it looks a lot darker than it looked in Photoshop. But when I enable the Overprint preview, they look OK. Now my concern is, what is correct? I don't want the images to come out so dark from print, but I can't really brighten them up any more in Photoshop, because there they look all right.

    I try to stay optimistic about Adobe color management, but it really is broken. This thread is just another example of the problem.
    Monitor profiles aside, the issue is the destination CMYK matching the print condition. Here we need a conversion to ISO Coated v2 (ECI).
    Or do we? If the original PDF is all CMYK, Adobe's default answer is "No Conversion Necessary". You could have US Web Coated SWOP v2 going in, it doesn't matter. If this gets placed in the new InDesign, then re-output PDF/X with ISO Coated v2 Output Intent, you essentially have a false output intent in the new PDF that does not correlate with the original file.
    Then, when you soft proof the original and the new on-screen, there is an appearance shift. But don't worry, it's OK, the numbers are the same. Which begs the question – if the numbers are OK, which appearance is correct?
    So let's switch gears. Start all over, and this time try to maintain color appearance. That means the US Web Coated SWOP numbers will change in the conversion to ISO Coated. Incoming is PDF/X-1a, with US Web Output Intent. This is placed in InDesign and imposed. Now re-output to PDF again, this time "Convert to Destination", NOT preserving numbers.
    Open up the PDF. We still have the blasted appearance shift! InDesign doesn't recognize the Output Intent in the original. All of the CMYK color in the original is Device, so InDesign leaves all the number values alone.
    Back to the original PDF, in Acrobat. Since InDesign can't do the conversion, it has to be done here. Is it easy? Depends on your definition of easy. True, the PDF has the Output Intent. The problem is PDF/X-1a is not a format that is meant to be refried. If the Acrobat working space is ISO Coated, it will treat the entire PDF as source CMYK ISO coated, because – don't forget – it's Device color. Device = Uncalibrated. Convert to ISO, no CMYK values will change.
    That means you have to change Acrobat CMYK working space to US Web. Now convert to the new Output Intent – ISO Coated. Don't forget to enable Preserve Black. Finally! A conversion. Let's just hope any JPEGs in the PDF survive getting refried.
    The PDF can now be placed and imposed in InDesign. Just remember to reset your Acrobat Color Settings now that you've fixed the broken PDF.
    Confused yet? It gets a lot better than that. What if whoever produced the original PDF didn't bother with PDF/X, or including profiles. Then you have mystery meat.
    Mystery = broken. You can't go anywhere because you don't know where to start. Sure, the Acrobat CMYK working is the assumed color space of CMYK content in the PDF. But is that really the correct CMYK?
    Probably not.

  • Colour management in Indesign

    I have CS3, and i just bought a Epson SPR2880.
    I tried to print out something, but the colours are all messed up (to dark etc.)
    In Indesign, i cant configure alot about my printer, only in photoshop.
    And when i make a PDF to print it via acrobat, then the fonts look not very fine.
    Thank you very much for your help

    Your cinema display should be just fine. Do you have a colorimeter for calibating and profiling that? THat would be the first step in a color-managed workflow. If the monitor doesn't accurately represent the numbers in the file, you can't really look at a print and say "this is wrong" because you don't actually know what's right.
    Your canned profiles for the various papers may be good enough -- give them a try -- but there are services that will make a custom profile for you for a fee.
    But wasDYP has given you the best information about what's going on currently on your system. This was a big problem for many users.

  • PDFing Spot Colour Transparencies from Indesign CS2

    Hello!,
    I think this is a common question, but I can't find a definitive answer. I am trying to PDF a file which has an image and then a spot colour transparency over part of it. When I PDF the file at Press Quality the spot colour transparency is white. When I PDF the file at a lower resolution (Standard size PDF) the transparency is fine.
    Is there some way I can resolve this? I need to prepare a Press Quality File. I seem to recall reading or hearing somewhere that Indesign does not deal with spot colour transparency very well. I am currently working in CS2, and am wondering if the issue has been resolved in newer versions of Indesign.
    Many thanks for your help, all,
    Pepi

    > that Indesign does not deal with spot colour transparency very well
    Nonsense.
    Just turn on Overprint Preview in Acrobat.

  • Disabling printer colour management

    Hi,
    my prints are coming out very dark on my Epson 4400 from photshop CS6 on my Mac OS X10.8.5
    In the print window it says to disable the printer colour management from the print settings dialogue box but I can't find this anywhere. I have seleceted Photoshop to manage the colours.
    Any advice much needed!

    It should be in your main Print window...Print > Color Handling.  I have mine set for "Let Printer Manage Colors" because the Epson driver has a lot of options I want to take advantage of and is engineered to interpret application color settings accurately.

  • A Colour Management tutorial from an amateur

    Archiving at the end of a long project I came across a document I assembled at the start when I wanted to teach myself about colour management. I spent several weeks reading, experimenting and putting together these notes, but it all came to nought. To quote from the notes:
    …I chose not to use colour management when printing my books on a Xerox iGen3. I converted the InDesign files to PDF with all colour management turned off, and asked the printer to print ‘direct’. The iGen RIP converted RGB images to CMYK, and CMYK images were printed as per the colour numbers. Using certain colour settings for my monitor, and for Photoshop and InDesign, I was able to obtain a very close match between what was on screen and what was on paper without the need for profiles…
    I've asked a fair few questions here over the years, and this forum has been a great help, but I rarely offer anything in return. Well, here's a little something that some people might find useful. A mob of information about colour management, collated from various sources with my tuppence worth here and there to make it flow. It was put together before my InDesign days when I used Pages, so forgive the mediocre layout.
    Colour Management (450k) can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/?86edp6742ac6zlv (If Peter Spier is reading this: Peter, that's a hot link now; I've upgraded my Mediafire account so there are no more banners).
    If anyone visits here in the future and that link doesn't work (which will happen if I upload a new version), try this one, a link to the folder: http://www.mediafire.com/?an9n0o36nymwv
    Please let me know if there are any gross errors in the PDF and I'll fire up Pages and correct them.

    geoffseeley, Welcome to the discussion area!
    1) amber light keeps flashing but internet works - is this a problem?
    I believe that indicates that you do not have wireless encryption enabled. If you enabled wireless encryption, the light should turn green.
    3) how does iTunes work through the extreme box? am i supposed to plug my home cinema into the extreme box somehow?
    The AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) has no special features to support video/audio directly. iTunes has nothing to do with the AEBS.
    The AirPort Express (AX) has an audio out port for streaming music from iTunes.

  • InDesign drops Colour Management Policies

    We have an issue where Indesign stops using the colour management policies, we are using Ask when opening on mismatch profiles, missing profiles and pasting.
    This works fine for a while, opening 3 or 4 documents but after that InDesign stops asking. A restart of InDesign makes it work again for a while and then it repeats.
    We are experiencing this issue in both InDesign CS 5.5 and CS 6
    Any suggestions to fix this will be most appreciated.

    It seems that doing a backup on the Workspace file and then throwing the whole language folder away and then put the workspace file in place again works better. The reports from production since we tried this has been positive.
    We do only use one third party plugin, this plug creates a preview of the InDesign file when saved and is used to show InDesign documents OnLine in our mediabanks. ( Norhplains Xinet) We have had this issue long before we invested in the Xinet system.

  • Colour issues when Producing iBA assets from InDesign

    Hi there
    This is just a heads-up for those that produce any assets for eventual use in iBooks Author in InDesign. Watch out for colour matching issues.  The RGB values in inDesign do not often produce the same colours in iBA. Why would someone be using InDesign in the first place? Well you might use InDesign to work out page layouts, or to produce the TOC backgrounds (so that Chapters can feature individual colour ways), or for creating images with text for use in HTML widgets. It's just quicker/easier at handling text and managing styles.
    Anyway - here's the issue. Try this: Create an colour with a specific RGB value in InDesign, export it as a jpg, and import it to iBA. Then create a shape within iBA with exactly the same RGB values. The two colours may differ. We have tried selecting different colour management options in InDesign, and even turning it off completely, but the colours still differ.
    We created an image in Photoshop with a certain RGB value. That looked fine in iBA, and had kept the correct RGB value (using the colour sample tool to test it). We took a .jpg exported from InDesign (with the same RGB value within InDesign), opened it in Photoshop, and although the two images in Photoshop reported the same RGB value, they were clearly different to look at. When the InDesign image was brought into iBA, it's colour sample tool reported a differing set of RGB values.
    So, if you have some assets where you need a reliable colour match you have a few choices:
    1) Don't use InDesign - use Illustrator or Photoshop
    2) If you must use InDesign - then export the assets as RGB PDFs with no colour management, open in Photoshop and export to jpg from there.
    3) If you're using colour ways, create the image from InDesign, but don't use the same RGB values that InDesign has to create elements in iBA. Sample the image using the colour sampler, and use the resulting RGB values to create your items.
    Like I say - it's not really an Apple issue, but those who use iBA with InDesign are better off pre warned, so I thought that I would be better off posting it here than in Adobe's forums.

    Publisher can create CMYK files, you go save as, then choose PDF, then click on Options or something and change it to Commercial Press.  This is Microsoft's version of the Press Quality export setting in Indesign, with it converting all images to CMYK, downsampling to 300dpi etc.
    NEVER EVER EVER USE THIS WAY TO CREATE PRINT FILES FROM PUBLISHER!!!!
    Have I made myself clear? 
    The CMYK images created this way have a terrible sort of under colour removal.  Think for example of a dark blue garment, where most of the garment is  something like 100C 60M 0Y 60K, but in the shadows it goes darker than  that, up to 100K.  Well in that area of 95 to 100% black in the image Publisher will convert it to only that, with no other colours underneath it.  But the areas surrounding it will be rich black.  This won't show up on digital proofs, even hi res ripped inkjets, and won't even show up on a press pass unless the machine has drying, because it is not until the ink dries off that you notice these weird photos....  Anyway what I do has already been said above.
    1. Refry it first.
    2. You should be able to sync your settings.
    3. No, it just thinks it can.
    In this case I actually had the Publisher files as well, so I printed them to PDF using Acrobat, and the images were fine.  Problem is the client had gotten used to text and other elements the way they looked using Publishers crappy CMYK export so I had to combine that with the proper images by cropping in Indesign..
    Here's examples of what happens:
    CMY channels only, BAD!
    CMY channels only, GOOD!

  • Why do colours change in PDF created from InDesign book?

    Please help.
    I've created a Book from 5 InDesign documents that have images text and some Illustrator drawings in.
    When I export the Book to PDF some of the colours in the Illustrator graphics are different (the graphics are all vector based maps with some text). Not all colours are changing, seems to be different blues showing as one green in the PDF.
    Same thing happens when I print the Book from InDesign.
    Could anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong.

    Help!  I too am having problems when creating a pdf in InDesign.  My colors are all Pantone process colors.  My specific problem is that when I export my book cover to a PDF, my process black is changing to gray.  This ONLY happens with pdfs.  When I save as a jpg things are fine.  It will print fine.  I have been scaling it down, but i prints black.  Help!  This is a project due for a typography class on Monday and must be printed and mounted for class.
    Mary

  • (New slant on) Printing at 1200 dpi from inDesign CS5 to a Xerox colour laser.

    I print calendars magazines and stuff like that.
    If I use Photoshop CS3~CS5 I can print a 600 dpi photograph to my Postscript 3 enabled Xerox 1200 dpi laser and get quite good appearance of the photo. Even better if I use a 1200 dpi image in the first place but when I use inDesign CS4~CS5 I can't print to the Xerox at anything over 600 dpi. Sure I can place a 1200 dpi image in the document but it still prints at a resolution that looks suspiciously like 300 dpi and the option to print at 1200 dpi is not available to me. I've filled the xerox to capacity with RAM and have a hard drive in it to store popular documents on.
    I've explored many ways some associates and posters to these forums have suggested but I still can't get the quality of print from inDesign that I get from Photoshop (or for that matter a popular page layout program from Canada).
    The perplexing thing I have yet to find the answer to is:
    Commercial printing presses print at 2400 dpi. (let's not confuse the issue here with lpi screens) inDesign is supposedly a professional level program, you'd think would be capable of delivering 2400 dpi output if commercial presses use that resolution. If this is so... Can anyone tell me please how to make inDesign output 2400 or even 1200 dpi?
    I've tried distilling the document to a PDF and using pure postscript to no avail. If the printer did not accept 1200 dpi images from Photoshop, I might be tempted to believe it was a printer issue but I'm satisfied it is not. I might point out that I also have an old Minolta (Postscript 3) colour laser too. It produces better quality output than the Xerox but at a huge cost of consumables. I also recognise the Xerox is a LED laser and not the ideal choice for image reproduction but still quite good enough (from Photoshop) for the work it is doing.
    Thanks in advance

    "John... You seem to be knowledgable in the area of RIPs and platemaking so here's a question you might care to answer. Suppose my platemaker can make a plate at 5080 dpi. (Forget the screening pitch for now) how do send an inDesign document to the platemaker at 5080 dpi resolution? For that matter how do I send any device a document at more than 600 dpi using inDesign? Answer that and you've answered my original question."
    ID's "Print Presets" for Postscript output are based on the RIP's PPD.  Since I do not have a RIP connected to my current workstation, the preset defaults to 'device independent'.  The only setting for resolution is the transparency flattener which can be set to "High Resolution".  You should be able to use the Xerox's RIP PPD in the "Print Presets" under File > Print Presets; where the output resolution should be able to be established.  My hunch is, you may have to settle for "High Resolution" and the RIP will output the highest resolution available in the Xerox machine ( if there are no options for resolution in the presets ).
    "The only way I can import an indesign PDF into a my pagesetter is to interpolate the images to 1200 ppi seperately from the text and line art which can be 300 dpi or ppi without showing discernable difference. Perhaps your reply in this area was regarding text, not images?"
    No.  This is backwards.  Text and line art is set at output resolution ( i.e., 2540dpi ).  You would definitely see a different between 300dpi vs. 2540dpi, especially in small text and the smoothness of lines.  Adobe has a Postscript formula for output resolution. I quote from their Print Publishing Guide "The maximum number of grays that most output devices can produce is 256."  Their Postscript formula is ( output resolution ÷ screen ruling )2 [ squared ] + 1 = shades of Gray.  So, typical offset imagesetter = 2540dpi ÷ 150lpi = 17 x 17 = 289 + 1 = 290 levels of gray.  More than enough to generate smooth blends.  In short, lasers ( or, in your case, LEDs ) typically cannot generate enough resolution to produce what you want.  Which is 1200ppi image resolution(?).  1/1200 LED is about half of what you need for the resolutions you're looking for.
    The long and short of it is this.  InDesign is capable of setting its resolution as "High" for raster setting ( i.e., transparency flattener ).  I agree with you it is frustrating that you cannot set the output res anywhere in ID.  I believe that is because it ( the resolution ) is left up to either the RIP or the Print Driver ).
    "The perplexing thing I have yet to find the answer to is:
    Commercial printing presses print at 2400 dpi. (let's not confuse the issue here with lpi screens)"
    No.  The standard is 5080dpi; 2540dpi is minimum ( see my Postscript levels of Gray formula above.  When I prepare an ID file for offset printing, I first have to determine the print vendor's RIP LPi.  This number determines image resolution which, typically is referred to as 2x the LPi.  LPi is ( or should be ) determined by the press itself, the paper, and the inks.  Desktop lasers are totally different.  InDesign does the user a favor by defaulting to device independent so that multiple file do not have to be generated for proofing.  Adobe leaves the print resolutions up to the output device.

  • Colour managment, printing from inkjet as apose to laser.

    Hi All!
    My problem with illustrator is about colour management. I used a laser print while I was on placement and now using my injet a home and now it doesn’t print out the right colour. I have a set of logos which I want in the company colours. I don’t want to change them manually for this reason.
    I did a bit of research on colour management for instance RIP separations, acrobat distiller etc. I don’t really know where im going wrong. My computer is XP windows and I have the Adobe master suite collection.
    I don’t know if the colours changing because of a printer change or whether it’s more connected to the actual illustrator program.
    Have anyone got any helpful suggestions?
    Helen

    Every inkjet printer wants to see RGB colors. If you send an inkjet CMYK colors it's confused. It doesn't understand the CMYK data so it converts it to something it does understand - RGB. It then takes that RGB data and converts it for printing to CcMmYyK. This double-conversion can quite often result in color shifts.
    This, combined with the fact that most inkjet printers don't have a RIP, yields less-than-great results on inkjets when printing from Illustrator in most cases.
    By simply saving the file as a PDF (No need for Distiller) you use Acrobat as a software RIP. Then if you print the PDF from Acrobat to the inkjet you'll get more more accurate results.

  • Colour management printing from LR 2.5

    When printing to my HP z3200 from LR.2.5 on a macbook pro OS 10.6 how do I get the application to handle colour management rather than the printer? Ordinarily I would print from Photoshop (CS3) and let photoshop manage colours but Photoshop seems unable to handle big print files on my system. I can print them from Lightroom but seem to only be able to use "Let printer handle Color management" which I suspect is not as good as using color management in Lightroom or photoshop. Any body out there have any solutions? Thank you very much if you do.

    You possibly need to add the profiles for your printer first.
    In LR select 'other' in the profile dropdown for the color managment. In the list check all the profiles you need for your printer.
    When you select a printer profile in LR and let LR manage the colors make sure to turn off the color management in your printer driver settings.
    HTH
    Franz

  • Colour Management - who does what - Some thoughts now the smoke is clearing

    First up, thanks very much to everyone who contributed their ideas and expertise to my recent query here, when I was seeking help for a problem with colour management issues when printing a magazine I edit. I have a ton of suggestions  to work through and study but the smoke is slowly clearing and it raises some interesting points which I think are worth recounting.
    First of all, I have been editing short run magazines now for 25 years, at first part time and later on a professional contract basis.  I am not a trained graphic designer nor a trained printer. I did start out training as a graphic designer, many years ago but gave it up for a career in IT (as a networking specialist). That was full time until 10 years ago, although I did some freelance writing and editing in my spare time.
    And yes, I did start originally with scissors and cut and paste, and moved on through black and white with spot colour and Pagemaker software  to full colour and InDesign today. One thing which may be different about my experience to most of yours is that I am a PC user and always have been. All my editing and graphics work has always been done on a PC - Pagemaker was our DTP package of choice for a long time and we supplemented this with Corel-Draw (which has a range of graphics handling options). All my software is legal and I always register it and keep it up to date. I have used the same graphic designer for quite a few years now and whenever we upgrade our software he goes and gets trained on the latest release.
    Around 10 years ago I was offered the chance to edit a specialist short run magazine (not the current one). This was a chance I took and gave up the day job and became a full time freelance. Editing is not my main or only source of income. I am also  a freelance writer and photographer and heritage consultant and I have a specialist image library.   I sell my own sell my work - articles and pictures - to the national and local press. I also write books (non fiction) on commission. The magazine editing is really an extension of my interest in historic landscapes. I have never had any complaints, or problems, with the freelance work, photos and archived images I sell.  Clients include national newspapers here in the UK, national magazine groups and my books are available in national bookstore chains. I supply my work digitally, naturally, and it includes photos I have taken myself and items which I have scanned into my library of historical images and store on line. No reported colour management issues there.
    I have always enjoyed a good relationship with my publishers and printers because I seek to be as professional as possible, which means delivering my stuff on time, to the required standard so that minimum intervention is required from them. This does assume that I have a clear brief from them on what they need from me.
    Recently this approach has not been enough to avoid colour management issues with the short run magazine I currently edit. I have been wondering when  and where things went astray and date it back to the upgrade to InDesign two years ago. However it may have its roots in my earlier decision to use PCs not Macs for my work.
    Until 4 years ago I had used the same printers for magazine editing for many years. They were a well respected firm specialising in short run magazines. They were not far from where I live and work and if there was a problem I would go over and discuss it with them. They were happy, and competent, to handle Pagemaker files generated on a PC and convert my rgb images to cmyk if there was any concern about the colour balance. On a few occasions I paid them to scan a photo for me. However 4 years ago the owner decided to retire and shut up shop. I needed to find a new printers and it had to be someone who specialised in short run magazines and could meet the budget of the charity I edit for. Also someone who could handle copy generated using Pagemaker running on a PC. I chose a printers I had used briefly in the past  where I knew some of the staff and was promised PC based Pagemaker would not be a problem. I even got this in writing. I started to send them proofs generated using Pagemaker v7 on my PC.
    I soon found that although they had agreed they could handle Pagemaker on a PC in fact they had only a few PC based clients and were using a single ageing PC running Pagemaker to proof their work. In fact nearly all their jobs were Quark based. I was also told we had to supply CMYK images although not given any further requirement so I now did the conversions from rgb to CMYK using my PhotoPaint software. (There are quite a few settings in Corel for the conversion but there was no guidance  by the printer on which to use so to be honest it did not occur to me that it might be a problem).
    Now of course I understand that the drive to get customers to supply CMYK images was a Quark driven requirement back in the late 1990s. I did not and do not use Quark so knew nothing for this.  I did have some early colour problems and font incompatibilities with the new printers and was pressured by their senior Graphic Designer (who designed for their own contract clients) to upgrade to InDesign and provide them with a .pdf, which I was assured would solve all my problems. The .pdf would be the same as the final printed magazine because "it would not require any further intervention by the printers".
    I expect you are collectively throwing up your hands in horror at this point, but I think he was speaking genuinely. The creation of a .pdf  using InDesign, is widely promoted as the ultimate answer to all printing issues.   I have encountered it recently with a lot of printers' salesmen and my friend, who edits a learned journal, has just been told the same thing by her printers, to get her to upgrade to ID. Incidentally she also uses a PC.
    So we upgraded our design process in house to InDesign and our graphic designer went on a course, two courses in fact. When we came to produce our first .pdf using ID, the printers'  Senior Graphic designer came on the phone and talked our designer through the ID Export function. I think he may at that time have told him to create a preset profile with MPC and the defaults, but to be honest I don't recall. We were never sent anything in writing about what settings we needed to match theirs. I continued to have intermittant colour management problems but put this down to my photos. Things came to head with the most recent issue where the colours were badly out on the cover, supplied by a press agency and taken by a professional photographer. The printers seemed to have little or no idea about possible causes.
    Initially I thought that part of the underlying cause must lie in some mismatch between what I was sending the printers and what they expected to receive so I asked them to specify what I should send. All they said was use Profile preset as MPC setting and accept  the defaults which accompany it.
    So I came on here looking for a solution. A lot of people were keen to offer their own experience which I really appreciate. However the messages could be conflicting. Some of you suggested it was the underlying cover photo which was at fault, some that it was my monitor which needed better calibration.
    Many of you here said that part of the problem, if not the whole problem, was the way I was generating my CMYKs for the printer and I should use Photoshop to do this. You also mentioned a number of possible colour management settings which I should try.
    At times the advice seemed to change tack. There were suggestions that the colour management issues I had  were nothing to do with the printers, that it was up to me not them. Quite a lot of you said I needed to be better informed about Colour Management issues. I agree, but I had never had any previously (maybe good luck, maybe good support from my previous printer) so I was not even aware that I needed to be better informed.  Some of you mildly chastised me for not finding out more and doing more to manage my own colour management with the switch to ID. To which I can only say if I had needed to train up, I would have done. I did not realise I needed to.  Nor was my designer aware of the issues as colour management was not really covered on his ID courses which were about typesetting and design.
    Some of you even seemed to hint that unless I was prepared to use an expensive high end printer or effectively retrain as a print specialist or get my graphic designer to do so, then I probably shouldn't be in the magazine editing game at all. OK maybe that is a bit harsh but you get the drift.
    The fact is that printing is much more accessible these days to all sorts of people and in particular to people with PCs. My brother lives in a large village in an isolated area and produces a village magazine which has been a great success. It is in black and white with spot colour but he would like to move to an all colour issue. He is a bit nervous of the colour management issues as he has no experience of graphic design and is his own designer using a low end entry level design package. He too uses a PC. The printers reps all tell him the same thing they tell me, that all he needs to supply is a .pdf using InDesign.
    Somewhere I feel a black hole has developed, maybe back in the 1990s with Quark 4.11. A lot of printers standardised on that, and set up a work flow and prepress dependent on CMYK images as provided by the clients. They assumed the the clients would doing their own colour management. This approach also assumes everyone is using Quark on a Mac with the full range of Adobe software. When it became possible to generate .pdfs using InDesign, this was held out to users as the Holy Grail of magazine printing, even though their workflows and prepress were still based on Quark 4.11 principles. Any underlying colour management issues the clients now have to tackle themselves.
    So now we have the situation in which I find myself, having to learn from scratch a good deal about colour management issues so that I can tell the printers what is needed for my magazine. Meanwhile all the printing salesmen, the ones I encounter anyway, are still busy pushing the InDesign to .pdf as the "be all and end all" solution. Some re-education is needed for all parties I think.

    I am glad to see that the sun is peeping through the clouds.
    I apologise for my Aussie-style straight talk earlier, but as I said before it was not directed personally at you but in the direction of others whom you epitomize, repeating a conversation I have had many times over the last 10 years or so where respectable, well-meaning photographers, designers and other contributors refuse to accept that colour management is being thrust upon them.
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