Colour profiles etc. workspace & pdf

Hi there
I know that there will always be a difference between onscreen and printed results. Although I would like to know what are the best settings to avoid a huge difference between the bright and colourful colours I get in InDesign when working on the file, and the final result CMYK-pdf that goes to the printing company? Sometimes difference is so big...
Are there special Adobe (or other) tools to avoid this huge difference between InDesign workspace colours and CMYK-PDF?
And is it recommended to use for example the ColorMunki calibration for a MacBook Pro?
Thanks a lot!
Bob

And is it recommended to use for example the ColorMunki calibration for a MacBook Pro?
Hardware monitor profiling will help with overall display and soft proofing accuracy, but won't change the realities of color gamuts. If you are choosing out-of-gamut RGB or Lab colors they will have to change when they are converted to CMYK values.
If you want to work with RGB colors it's a good idea to turn on Overprint or Separation Preview while you work, which will preview the eventual conversion to your document's CMYK space. The document's profile (Edit>Assign Profiles...) should be the correct profile for the destination press—the CMYK profile affects the softproof accuracy.
RGB also has a gamut limit—100% cyan cannot be accurately displayed, so some CMYK blues will print with more saturation than a soft proof even on a well calibrated display.

Similar Messages

Colour Profile Question - Press PDF

Hi
I've got a quick question regarding colour profiles.
I've designed an A5 flyer for a client and I have my CS3 suite colour settings set to Adobe 1998 for RGB and Euro Coated for CMYK. The client has decided that this flyer is now to be printed on uncoated paper. So, should I be converting or assigning the working/document CMYK profile to Euro uncoated?
Also on output for press I have a PDF export setting which I use for creating press pdf's which is set to 'No Colour Conversion' and 'Don't include profiles', so in fact does the above matter at all?
I'm totally confused, any help appreciated!
Thanks

I think you are guessing correctly, they may have some control which will work ok for them at a certain level.
You could convert in ID, which will alter the appearance and that will change the output file. Or you could manually adjust the colour/saturation to taste and let the printers go through their usual process and end up with better job.
They probably 'run to density' on press, so you are taking some of their control. Most printers at least calibrate their equipment to a standard, such as Euroscale and then suggest that clients use that when preparing files. That is what I guess when a printer does not have a custom profile.
What they are saying to you is that they are calibrated and their approximate appearance is based on Euro Coated on coated stock at a particular ink density measured at the press.
Uncoated stock looks desaturated, so if you increase your saturation and reduce your Total Ink, you can control the look at their desired press density.
This is not correct colour management, but reflects real world conditions in many commercial 'jobbing' printers in my experience.

Problems with print and colour profiles etc in CS4

This is driving me round the twist. until recently all was fine, but lately everything seems to have got screwed up. I am trying to print images produced in Corel painter, which have been placed etc into an .ai artboard. (CS4)
No problems until recently, but now there seems nothing I can do to make it print accurately. There are so many colour and print profile choices available, I don't know which to pick as there doesn't seem to be a default.
The screen image adjusts to any profile or colour management settings I change, but the actual print image never bares any relation to that screen image.
Work I have printed previously,( and have not adjusted settings for )without any problems at all.. are now printing inaccurately.
I'm using a Canon MP640 inkjet printer by the way.
The same is true with printing from PS and any other application.
I haven't made colour settings through Bridge for all adobe apps' as none of them so far seem to be accurate.
Even if I saave an image to pdf or jpeg, and print from preview, it still comes out with the colours badly changed.
Please, please help.. I can't work this out and I have got to print!!!

willspring,
Just to make sure: As I understand it, things worked in CS4, not only in earlier versions.
To reset settings in Illy, you may Move the folder, but it may not solve the issue (the simpler but less thorough resetting being to Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Cmd+Option+Shift during startup).
Have you made any changes, such as printer driver or whatever, between success and failure?

Help! How do I create a document with an imported PDF in 300dpi using a FOGRA27 colour profile?

I am a new Indesign user and I have been working with GIMP for the last year creating single colour print-ready PDFs. But now I need to create a document with a FOGRA27 CMYK colour profile and a resolution of at least
How do I create a document with an imported PDF in 300dpi using a FOGRA27 colour profile?
I can import the PDF by creating a new document and finding the PDF in places, but it's bad quality.
The only colour profile I can find under View - Proof Setup is FOGRA39, but I need FOGRA27!
Help help help, I need to get these files printed in two days!
Thanks so much..
xx

Proof Colors doesn't change the file's color management, it just lets you see what the color values would look like if they are printed unchanged on different output devices. If you want to actually convert the color from one CMYK space to another, it's probably better to do that in Acrobat—Tools>Print Production>Convert Colors.
There's very little difference between Fogra27 and Fogra39—Fogra27 allows more total ink 350 vs. 330.
There's nothing you can do to improve the quality of low res images

Assignment of colour profiles in indesign vs PDF colour profile

Hi all,
If in the assign colour profiles menu of indesign I had the same setting for all my indesign files, as shown in screenshot attached.
And then when a PDF is created from an Indesign file using a different CMYK profile, will the original indesign setting have any impact on the PDF created? Will the PDF ignore the settings of the Indesign document?
Regards, Tim

Many templates that get populated with RGB images. .... The only colour change in the process is when the final PDF is rendered to go to the printers.
So, for my master indesign files what is the best colour set up?
The PDF/X presets are designed for your scenario.
I doesn't make much sense to use any CMYK color because you never know what the destination will be and CMYK colors will almost always get reconverted. The only problem RGB presents is gamut, so when you edit, a soft proof setup with a CMYK space would be advisable. The ideal would be to establish one RGB editing space (Adobe RGB?) and assign it to all your RGB objects and ID files.
It sounds like you are expected to finalize color management at PDF creation, if that's the case PDF/X-1a forces all RGB color into one destination CMYK space and flattens transparency. When you automate the PDF creation you would need to be able to set the destination in the Output panel depending on the where the file is going.
The alternative is PDF/X-4 where there are no color conversions but every object gets a color profile. In that case the color conversions would happen at output, i.e. the PDF going to a newspaper gets converted to the newspaper's profile (SNAP?) at output. All the vendors would have to be on board for that to happen, which might not be the case.

Do I need to set AI colour profiles for use in ID?

My previous set up:
Mac
CS2 (Illustrator, Photoshop, Bridge)
Quark XPress 7
My new set up:
PC (Win 7)
CS5 (Illustrator, Photoshop, Bridge, InDesign)
My problem:
I work for a company that prints newspapers, but my dept also does work for glossy sheetfed printers (magazines leaflets etc)
All my work is exclusively CMYK.
With my previous set up - I didn’t want to have to switch my colour profiles via Bridge as I was constantly juggling two types of jobs:
Our tabloid press - Profile - ISOnewspaper26v4 (CMYK)
Sheetfed Printers - Profile - ISO Coated V2 (Fogra 39) (CMYK)
So I set my CS2 Suite colour settings to ISO Coated V2 (Fogra 39) and set an action in Photoshop to convert jpegs / eps photos to ISOnewspaper26v4.
So my CS2 working space was set for Sheetfed glossy publications and if I wanted to set a picture to the correct profile for newsprint I just had to open the picture and hit the action that applied the ISOnewspaper26v4 profile.
Regarding Quark – I set up separate templates for each type of job:
One for Profile - ISO Coated V2 (Fogra 39) and one for - Profile - ISOnewspaper26v4.
Regarding Illustrator - I found that Quark 7 didn’t differentiate between Illustrator colour profiles, or if it did, it didn’t show up in ‘Usage’.
If I went to Quark Usage and went to ‘Profiles’ it only listed the Quark profile and any Photoshop profiles, not any Illustrator profiles.
So in Illustrator I just set colour profiles to ‘do not colour manage this document’. So that I only had to worry about changing profiles for Photoshop jpegs / eps’s.
So I had a good little system going that served me well and now my company decided to move us to PC’s and CS5; and I still have the same problem – juggling newsprint jobs and glossy magazine jobs and not wanting to have to synchronise my CS suite colour settings every time I switch between jobs...
So I was hoping to stick with my little system on PC / CS5.
So basically my question is, do I need to worry about Illustrator colour profiles if I am bringing Illustrator files into InDesign? (To clarify, my Illustrator files are always pure vector, so there is no chance of some rogue RGB jpeg sneaking through on a Illustrator file)
Im open to suggestions regarding my set up, but really would prefer not to have to keep switching my colour profiles.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

First, I wasn't suggesting that your PDFs be exported to RGB, but it is a common workflow these days to keep photos in RGB until you convert them to the correct profile during the export process. This maximizes the potential for re-purposing your documents and allows you to use the same RGB photos for different output purposes without having to do separate CMYK conversions for each destination, so long as you don't need to do any tweaking after the conversion.
And to answer your question, if the .ai files have no embedded color profile they will ALWAYS be considered to use whatever the CMYK working space is in your ID file, so the numbers will be preserved. This means that there will be slight differences in color on output on different devices (the whole point of color management, after all, is to preserve the appearance of colors by altering the numbers for the output device).
Does the vector work you get from Thinstock come with an embedded profile? Is there any color that is critical for matching, such as a corporate color (which should be spot, but that's a different discussion), or do you use the same art in both the newspaper and magazine, and does the client expect a match (which we know isn't going to happen anyway)?
If there's no embedded profile when you start, there's no way to know what the color was supposed to look like, so color management is not possible, really. You can assign a profile, but you'd be guessing. Since the correct appearance at that point is unknown continuing with out color management shouldn't present a problem. The only case where you would need to manage the vector art would be if the color APPEARANCE is critical or you need it to match across different outputs, and in that case you would need to assign a profile and allow ID to preserve the profile on import and remap the numbers, which means you would likely get rich blacks someplace. Since it's unlikely that you can get a good match going from glossy to newsprint, I probably wouldn't even try -- you wouldn't want, for example, to tag the art as newsprint, and have it print subdued on the gloss if it would look better or more correct with the other profile. Color management would be much more useful if you were going from sheetfed to web on the same stock.

IPhoto Book Colour Profiles & File Sizes?

I want to make a book in iPhoto. All my images are Adobe RGB. Do I need to change the colour profile.
I have a Mac with and Apple flat screen that has been colour balanced. So all the images look good. I am just concerned that they will be printed in a different profile and look rubbish.
What is the smallest file size and resolution that will look good.
Any other helpful advice.

Here's what Apple responded with when I asked them about book material and print quality:
"Thank you for contacting the Apple Print Products Customer Service.
I understand that you would like to know the printing process that is used and the color mode the files should be in, so you can better advise users in the iPhoto forum.
iPhoto version 4 or later, allows you to import and print files through the Apple Print Product service as RGB, grayscale, or CMYK color space. JPEG files with *RGB color space are recommended for best results.*
While iPhoto 2 can import files of various formats, including RGB color, grayscale, and CMYK, this version requires JPEG files with RGB color space when printing photos and books.
For more information regarding iPhoto 2, please visit the following article:
iPhoto: Color, Black and White Prints Appear Garbled or Distorted
For more information regarding iPhoto 5, please visit the following article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=165501
Here are some of the technical specifications for the books, cards, and calendars. I hope this gives you an idea about their quality and form.
BOOKS
All iPhoto books are printed using acid-free paper for long-lasting image quality. The photos are printed at a high resolution (300DPI if you use iPhoto 6). There is no external modification--such as sharpening or contrast adjustment--of the photos; what you see in the application is what is printed in the book.
Hardcovers Books
The cover is hard-bound and covered in linen. You select the linen color during the book-ordering process. The hardcover books have a solid, stiff binding that is glued and crimped. The internal pages, measuring 8.5 x 11 inches, are printed on McCoy 100# Text Gloss paper stock.
Softcover Books
The softcover books come in three sizes:
- Large 8.5 x 11 inches
- Medium 6 x 8 inches
- Small 2.6 x 3.5 inches
All of the softcover books have internal pages that are printed on McCoy 100# Text Gloss paper stock. The large softcover book has a white cover (Kromekoteplus Folding Cover, 16 point) with a cutout on the front that reveals the cover-page photo in the book. The covers for the medium and small softcover books have the cover image and title printed directly on the cover. All of the softcover books have a glued binding and feature a thick cover of McCoy 100# Cover Gloss paper stock.
CARDS
All cards are printed on McCoy 120# Silk Cover paper stock. The postcards measure 4 x 6 inches, and the greeting cards measure 5 x 7inches.
CALENDARS
All calendars measure 8 x 10 inches and are printed on McCoy 100# Silk Cover paper stock.
To ensure the best print quality, we have chosen to use Kodak NexPress technology. The press uses a dry toner, which is fused to the surface of the paper. Please see NexPress' site for more information:
KODAK NEXPRESS 2500 Digital Production Color Press
I hope you find this information helpful in answering questions on the iPhoto forum."
As for file size, keep the pixel dimension of the photo the largest you can. That will convert to the highest resolution possible when converted to the pdf for uploading and printing. iPhoto will assign a warning flag to those photos that end up with a dpi of less than 180 when added to a particular frame in the book. When added to a smaller frame the warning flag may go away. I've printed books with that warning and was happy with the results.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Can you use a photo lab's colour profile in Elements?

Using PSE 6, I want to use a printer profile from a digital photo processing lab, so as to get accurately printed images. (Additonally my monitor is calibrated by a Heuy Pro)
The profile is 'FUJI 570 Supreme Lustre' which I have downloaded from the lab and installed on my Windows Vista PC. Following PSE Help instructions, if I go to the print option then from the drop down Printer Profile list, I can see, choose and select the Fuji 570 profile.
The problem is that this process only seems aimed at then allowing me to click on cancel or print (there is no save option etc). PSE seems to assume that I am connected to the Fuji printer and want to print the image myself, which, of course, I don't but rather want to save this image with the correct profile for the lab's printer and paper-type, so as to send the file(s) for my colour managed image(s) to be printed.
Is there any way that you can save a PSE image file with a colour profile like this in it?
If yes, how is this done?
The lab provides instructions as to how to do this with Photoshop but they are unfamiliar with PSE. In the lab's instructions it refers to View/Proof Set up/custom and unchecking Preserve Colour Numbers, Paper White and Ink Black. Is any of this possible/necessary with PSE 6 (or any later version?)
I have tried to resolve this myself but come to a dead end. If anyone can advise me how to achieve what I want to do, that would be really great or if it can't be done using PSE, to know that would be a great help.
(I have used this lab before without the profiles and whilst the results were good in several respects, some colours, not surprisingly, were not very accuate with my calibrated monitor)
Thanks for reading and considering my posting on the forum.

Thanks for this further advice- much appreciated.
I don't think the Edit>>Colour Settings is going to work as this means that the monitor set up becomes the profile. In my case the Huey profile (which is confirmed as it shows in the print set up preference/settings boxes). Although the Huey profile is important for accurate editing, it will not fulfil the lab'sFuji printer/papers settings.
It looks like PSE does not have any way to save to file with the printer profile (unlike Photoshop). This is a real shame.
It's an interesting issue, as I can't believe that I am the only user ever wanting to use a lab's profile to get better colour management and to use a photographic lab rather than an attached printer.
Anyway, thanks again for engaging in this issue and for your thoughts and advice - much appreciated.
Should I find a way to resolve this, I will post it on the forum.

Using colour profiles with Windows XP Pro SP2

Hi,
Freshly-installed WIndows XP Pro SP2 on the Unibody MBP.
I note that in the advanced display settings there is a tab for colour management. It offers the opportunity to add a .icc or .icx (I think) colour profile. I copied across my .icc-prefixed colour profile from my Leopard install, added it, and Windows reports it as invalid.
Can anyone tell me how (or whether it's possible) to make a Leopard-created .icc profile work with XP Pro SP2? If it's not possible, can someone suggest some free software for XP Pro SP2 that I can use to achieve a similar result?
Thanks.
SiR. G.

Got the error message 3256 after downloaded latest itunes version 8.xx.
After days of reading logs and bullentin boards, uninstalling, hard resets,firewalls experiments, etc, I found solution for me. Following firmware upgrade to airport express solved. When you go to Apple download center and search for airport revisions only the MAc version pops up. However they do have this one for windows. Give it a try. Good luck.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/firmware_hardware/airportexpressfirm wareupdate63forwindows.html

CCP colour profiles and different lenses

Hi,
I just got a Nikon D7000 and I've been playing around with my ColourChecker Passport to set up some standard colour profiles for use in ACR as a general starting point for processing. I've been pondering if it's worth my while to create different profiles for each lens I have, something I've not previously done when profiling my old D60, where I just created a series of profiles (including some dual-illuminants) by using one lens and capturing the target under a variety of different lighting conditions (e.g. tungsten, flash, sunshine, etc).
Anyway, I just tried creating a profile for my 105mm 2.8 lens under tungsten lighting, having previously (yesterday) created one under the same lighting with my 50mm 1.4 lens and I've been comparing them in ACR using the colour dropper. I’ve opened up the images used to create the profiles, applied the profile generated using the ColourChecker software for the corresponding lens, and then set the white balance using the ‘off-white’ colour patch with the eye dropper WB tool. I then used the colour dropper on the same colour patches in each image. I’ve noticed that the RGB colour values aren’t matching quite as well as I’d expected (note that I thought it potentially unrealistic to get a perfect match): blues and greens seem to be roughly the same, so for example with patch #3 (third from left on the top row), one is at 69,72,115 and one at 70,77,115, but reds and oranges seem to be a bit further out of sync, e.g. with patch #15, one is at 99,45,29 and one at 109,51,34; with patch #16 one is at 166,167,29 and one at 175,179,33. This surprises me a little, as I thought the idea of CC was to calibrate the profiles so that colours were essentially the same across different lenses – and different cameras if applicable. I have to say though that, colour values aside, when eyeballing the two images on my monitor (profiled) they do look very similar, which I guess is the main thing!
I wonder if perhaps I’m missing something here? I’m quite prepared to be told that I’ve got this all wrong!
Also, I wonder if others on the forum using CCP have gone to the trouble of creating lens-specific profiles, or if they’ve just created profiles for their camera body using one lens? This is the approach I took with my D60, but having done more reading on CCP I know that some folk do advise to create separate profiles for each lens they use (and I am of course aware that the CCP user manual also states to do this). Do you even create a profile for each and every shoot (when possible)?
I’d be very interested to hear your opinions on this as I’ve not been using CCP for all that long and am always eager to learn more.
M

First of all, a color profile is for correcting color, not luminance, so compare the HSL or Lab coordinates not the RGB values so you can just ignore the L coordinate. From your given RGB numbers, you can already tell that one of the images is brighter than the other so it is just confusing looking at the RGB values and guessing what you would expect the three values to be in the other image. For comparing two images, I would concentrate on the Hue number in HSL coordinates, since Saturation can change with contrast, and Luminance can change with Exposure and Contrast.
Also, as part of your eyedroppering comparison, another thing to do would be adjust the "Exposure" of the darker image until the L number (in HSL or Lab) is the same as the L in the brighter image and then see what the other two numbers are--maybe the other two numbers won't change, and then you can try putting one of the HSL values in the "Old" patch of the color-picker and the other in the "New" patch and see how much different they look. You'll have to do this comparison in Photoshop not ACR so use ProPhotoRGB when you export to keep the colors as close to the same as you can.
The two questions you seem to have, are: does using a lens-specific profile make enough difference to real world situations to bother with, and where are the variations I'm seeing when the profiles are applied to their source images coming from since I would think they would be the same.
For testing whether the profiles computed for the two lenses make a noticeable difference even with your two profiles that don't appear to correct the same, apply the two profiles to the SAME CC image (one of the two you created your profiles with), save an sRGB JPG of each, and see if you can tell the difference, either side-by-side, or even better, when you flip back and forth in some sort of photo viewer--like with Windows Picture Viewer when those are the only two images in the folder. By apply the two profiles to the same image you have mitigated any luminance and white-balance differences in the source image and are merely looking for differences in the effect of the two profiles.
If you can't tell much difference between the same image using each of the two profiles then it's just an academic exercise. I like academic exercises, but am also a perfectionist and lazy so I would do the experimenting until I found out I'd perfected things enough that I can't tell any difference then I can stop. In other words, do I need to profile for various lenses or not, or am I just doing it because I like to control everything as much as possible and it really doesn't make any difference.
Before answering the other question, about where any profile variations might be coming from, understand that the combination of white-balance and color-profile is attempting to convert the colors of an object photographed in the lighting scenario the profile was created for into the colors of the object photographed in a standard lighting scenario. In my mind the works out to be "make the colors of the object look like it was photographed in sunlight". The issue that requires making a profile and not just white-balancing, is that any part of the object that was colored the same as the light color will be neutral when the white-balance is done, and more generally the closer the color of the object is to the color of the light, the more neutral it will become when WB is done. For example, if you have a red ball and a gray ball and photograph them in red light, they will both look gray when white-balanced. A real-world example of this would be flesh-tones in incandescent light, when white-balanced will have even less color and be more neutral or pale or even bluish, than the skin photographed in sunlight, so after white-balancing, the job of an incandescent profile is to boost the reddish colors and diminish the bluish colors so the skin looks like it would in sunlight. This might be an argument for NOT WBing skin in incandescent lighting. In severely-colored lighting, especially nearly monochromatic lighting such as sodium vapor lighting, correcting the colors to be as if in sunlight will be impossible, but to the extent the lighting isn't monochromatic, the colors can be made to look more normal, if not perfectly normal..
To understand whether the differences you're seeing in the profiles are due to the lenses being different color or due to variations in the profiling process, itself, think about where the variations could come from and how you might test for each:
Was the source lighting exactly the same color between the two shots with different lenses (that were taken a day apart)? Test by eyedroppering the WB of same neutral-color patch in each photo and see if there is any difference in the Temp/Tint numbers. You cannot test the source-lighting color unless you have shot with the SAME lens for both days, so if you don't have shots with the same lens, seeing that the WB is not much different between the two shots can give you some comfort that the difference in the profile was not a difference in the source lighting. The source lighting might have changed if there was some daylight mixing in on one day and not the next, or if the A/C was running on one day and not the other and the voltage was slightly different and the redness of the light was different. One other thing that can wreak havoc in repeatability of both color and exposure is if any of the lighting is fluorescent CFL or tubes, because that sort of gas lighting changes intensity as the voltage varies and reverses 60-times per second and this variation is especially noticeable if the shutter is fast. So while your lighting may have been incandescent any changing daylight or flickering fluorescent lighting mixed in might have changed the source-lighting color enough to make a variation in the profile more than the color of the lenses might have.
This first question dealt with the photos taken with each of the two lenses. The remaining questions are about testing with just one lens.
Is the profiling process repeatable? Test by creating two different profiles from the SAME CC photo and be a little sloppy about when marking the corner patches, and see if you get different numbers applying those two profiles. An idea where things might not be repeatable, is that there are slightly variations in the color of the color patches (you should be able to move the eyedropper across the color patch and see if the RGB numbers change) due to slight color noise and depending on where you put the "corner" markers on the CC image, you'll get slightly different results.
Does the exposure make any difference? You can determine this by taking a photograph using the SAME lens in the SAME lighting (a few seconds apart), and just varying the exposure by 1/2 or 2/3 of a stop, and then computing a profile for each exposure and apply those two profiles to one of the exposures and see if the non-L coordinates of HSL or Lab eyedroppered.
If you check all these variations you'll have an idea of how much each affects the profile and then can judge if the magnitude of the differences you're seeing are related to variations with creating the profile, or actually related to differences in the lenses and thus a new profile for each lens might be warranted, assuming you can tell the difference, still. I mean even if you can tell the difference between the profiles created with different lenses, are the differences from the lens significantly more than the differences due to exposure or lighting color or corner-patch placement?
I haven't tried computing a profile for each lens; however, I have created a dual-illuminant profile (2700K and 6500K) and then computed new color-matrix slider values (the ones under where you set the profile) for various lighting conditions using Tindemans' script and despite the slider values being not close to zero, I can hardly tell any difference on the few images I've looked at. Once exception to not having the color-matrix sliders make much difference is when using the dual-illuminant profile with fluorescent lighting, which has a significant Tint value compared to either of the standard illuminants, but in the case of fluorescent lighting, I'd rather compute a whole new profile, than use a slider-corrected dual-illuminant profile.
Besides eyedroppering Lab or HSL coordinates in Photoshop, another way to check for color variations is to create a color-error plot in the Color Check module of Imatest and see how far the squares and circles are off from each other for each color-patch. An example of such a color-error plot is linked below, where it shows how far off the colors of a color-checker are in incandescent lighting after computing a color-profile in incandescent lighting. You'd expect them to be completely correct, but they aren't, and is a lesson in color profiles only being to go part way in making the colors look as if they were photographed in sunlight:
http://www.pbase.com/ssprengel/image/101322979
If you click on the above image, you will return to the thumbnails for color-error the gallery, and in the gallery description you can see links to both Imatest and Tindemans' script if you care to pursue things more in depth. Imatest is not free but does have a free 30-day trial, which should be enough time to get some useful information out of it.

Colour profiles and my sanity!

I hope there's someone here who can help this Photoshop newbie!
I am a keen but very amateur photographer, and I'm experiencing a frustrating problem in Photoshop and though I've read a few articles on Colour Profiles, I must be missing something obvious.
I've set my Photoshop (CS6) colour settings (edit/color settings) to ProPhotoRGB. I import my images from my camera and edit them so they look exactly the way I want. The problem is, after I save the final images and view them in other image viewing software, such as FastStone InfanView, ACDsee etc. the colours look a little washed out. I must be missing something obviously but I just don't know what. I know for web uploading, it's usual practice to set your color profile to sRGB, and that seems to work fine for the web, but my images are being saved primarily for viewing offline and for possible printing.
Can someone explain to me in layman's terms what it is I'm doing wrong here?
Thanks.
Simon.

Good day!
Could you please post screenshots to illustrate the issue?
And set the Status Bar in Photoshop to display the profile.
Do you "Embed Color Profile" when you save the images?
Regards,
Pfaffenbichler

Colour Profile issues between North America and Europe

I have a corporate colour, C80M80Y0K0 which creates a very attractive shade of purple. Within North America all printouts demonstrate very similar variations of that purple colour. We have an office in UK that uses the same collateral pieces. While they preview correctly on screen, they are unable to reproduce that purple in their office or with their professional suppliers (all digital processes). The resultant colour is blue (approx C92M68Y18K0).
The files are created in Indesign, using a process colour within Indesign, and then exported to a PDF and shared with the UK office.
My guess is that it is a colour profile issue - has anyone else had this same issue, and if it is indeed a colour profile issue, what profile would you recommend using? I've tried using some of the other default profiles within Indesign but with no luck.
Any assistance would be really appreciated.

The resultant colour is blue (approx C92M68Y18K0).
What preset are you using for the Export, or what are the Output settings? Have you tried PDF/X?
PDF/X-4 will leave color unchanged and profile everything, so a color change like you are describing most likely means the wrong output profile is being used in the UK.
PDF/X-1a forces everything into your doc's CMYK space and makes conversions at output less likely—with X-1a your 80|80|0|0 mix will probably be output unchanged.

Wrong embedded colour profile causes huge jpg files when published to .Mac

D'oh! i posted the following on the iDisk discussion my mistake. Here it is all again for iWebbites:
I've spent most of the day trying to optimise my new iWeb site on .Mac but the published jpg files are far too big.
Despite sizing to 800x600 px and jpegging at about 5 or 6 in Photoshop which resulted in a file size of about 100kb on my local disk, when uploaded to .Mac via iWeb the they have turned into 800 kb files.
Lots of trouble-shooting, including ensuring that they weren't converted to png, that they have no borders, reflections or drop-shadows yet they still got bloated on the upload. Especially the photos in the photo-gallery page.
I've isolated the problem but don't know what to do next:
Turns out, iWeb ignores the sRGB embedded colour profile and replaces it with the monitor profile of the originating computer.
I discovered this after I opened the file in Photoshop directly via iDisk in Finder. Converting or assigning the file to sRGB and saving it back down to iDisk immediately restored it to its intended file size of 100kb and this time with the correct sRGB colour profile.
Going now to the domain.sites on my local disk and opening the package shows all the photos doubled up. A 360 x 264 .jpeg file with the monitor profile embedded and bloated out to 800kb plus the original 800x600 image with sRGB and .jpg as the file type but still only 100kb
So what the heck is happening in iWeb to do this and to use the wrong file type associations with the wrong file when uploaded?
There is very little on the forum about colour (color) profiles and no mention of the bloat in file size, just a reference to colour and tone issues with the wrong profile so I'm wondering if its related to the 1.1.2 update. (I haven't really tried using iWeb until the last week or so).
Fixing the problem by post processing the photos on my site every time I publish would be impossible with the amount of photos I have and my intention of updating the web galleries regularly.
As you can find out if you go to a photo page on my site:
< <a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://web.mac.com/adrian_malloch/iWeb/AdrianMallochPhotography/ Kabaddi.html > some pages take horrendously long to load. Check out some of the other Subculture pages. I haven't tested them all but Safari Activity viewer shows that most of the slow speed is related to opening jpeg files.
Any help and informed suggestions would be hugely appreciated.

This is doing my head in.
My last two comments "posted" half way through writing, before I had a chance to edit completely.
Here's how it should have read :
Using sRGB as a monitor profile, in itself, doesn't make a lot of sense.
A monitor profile is custom made specifically for the monitor to compensate for its display characteristics.
A "good enough" monitor profile is to use the software calibration built into the Displays preferences. Go to System Preferences/Displays/Color/Calibrate and follow the prompts. Hint: squint as you try to judge the colour and tone differences. The idea is to make the detail so fuzzy you don't notice it.
It's not very accurate, especially with LCD screens, but it's better than nothing and certainly better than using a universal colour space like sRGB, etc.
The accurate option is to get hold of a hardware calibrator like the Spyder, or Gretag-McBeth iOne Display (which I use). It costs a bit but is vital for accurate repeatable colour.
The whole point is that when the profile is made up and is set as the default profile, then you will get a WYSIWYG screen.
So, the same images will look the same on different monitors providing they each have accurate monitor profiles made specifically for them.
If you use sRGB as your monitor profile then you cannot expect the image to look the same on any one else's machine, whether they use sRGB, a monitor profile or any other profile. Worse still, if you change an image to "look right" on your screen, chances are that the image will look horrible on another screen.
Hence, why I will only switch to sRGB monitor profile as a workaround for uploading in iWeb. Nothing else!!

Press colour profiles / ink density

I am setting up press. I have been given colour profiles. I go edit convert to colour profile. I save the file and place in indesign. I make a high res pdf set to 2001 and this colour profile and my ink density is still too high.
Am I not converting the colour correctly?
I have a lot of press to get out, each with bespoke images and not much time to do it.
Please help. Thanks!

Hello
The colour profile was supplied by the newspaper.
The tac max was stated by the newspaper.
I checked the tac in acrobat > output preview (same as you use)
The image showed up bright green areas showing that the ink density exceeded limit requested.
I must be doing something wrong just not sure what it is?

HELP! Colour Profiles

Hi there,
Please help! I have been asked by a client to design a leaflet for his business, it's pretty standard and he wanted colours that are used in his l
His logo was designed in Photoshop and I asked for the original file but he only had a high res jpeg and a flattened PSD. I asked for the Pantone or CMYK values but was just given web values so I colour matched the colours used in the logo and transported the jpeg into InDesign and just carried on laying the leaflet out as I normally would using the CMYK colour match values. I sent him the proof and he said he wanted the colours changed as they weren't bright enough. When I looked at the Photoshop file again he was right, the original colour is much brighter. Changed the colour profile I was working in (Which was RGB) to CMYK. The colour in the logo immediately looked brighter so I matched that colour and it matched to an RGB colour so I changed all the colours to the RGB colour (even though I wanted to work in CMYK) which looked much more like the original logo colour.
However when I proof the colours it turns back to the duller colour. Does anyone know what is causing this problem? I have never encountered it before? Is it because it was designed using web values or am i working in the wrong profile? How do I change it so that the colour looks the same on the print document as it does on the PSD logo?
I need a quick turn around on this and am out of my depth at the moment! I have just set up Freelance as I was made redundant from my last job and I haven't ever encountered this before. Hoping one of you knows how to help.....I'm working in CC
Looking forward to hearing your replies,
Many thanks in advance

It's difficult to recommend anything without seeing the file. If possible, attach the .psd to your post. InDesign has application color settings. If you have Adobe Bridge, you can synch all of your application color settings there. I am concerned about an obvious shift where it is obvious to the customer. He says the business cards match, but in reality they may not. The way things are going, he will continue to run into problems matching color further on even if he does business with someone else. When you open the PSD in Photoshop, assign the Adobe RGB there and save it under a new name so you know in the furture it is Adobe RGB. Forget the JPEG ( use it for web only ). I am assuming the file is PSD because it needs to be PSD for whatever reason. In InDesign, set your CMYK workspace to an appropriate profile ( like SWOP Coated v2 ). Now, if the file is so dulled down that it is noticeable, then you could adjust the "CMYK" curves to brighten it a bit. This is an excellent opportunity to gain some more work ( if possible ) with this client. That will require educating him/her in the proper logo production techniques. No way should a logo be produced in Photoshop and especially RGB color space. You've been in the business long enough to know what the proper procedures are. If they are unwilling to invest in a rock solid solution, then it may be better to reject their business and move on. Client is basicly blaming you for their mistakes. The frustration is that the client likes monitor color which is an illusion. At this point, client has to be more cooperative and lead you to their business card printer so you can investigate what they received from said client as a file and in what color space using what profile. If printer accepted an RGB based file, ask them for their workflow requirements and file parameters. This should give you a little more background so you can beging to build a solid foundation for said client's corporate identity. If their vendor, along with themselves, refuse to cooperate, then forget them. It's in their best interest to supply you with everything you need to accomplish whatever outlandish color they were able to achieve.

Colour profiles etc. workspace & pdf

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