PDF in CMYK color space?

I'm working on the most recent version of Pages from iWork 2008 running on the most recent version of Leopard, and I have to create a PDF in the CMYK color space for publication, but I do not have Acrobat Distiller.
Is it possible to create a CMYK PDF with ColorSync filters? I have tried using the "Generate PDF-X/3" filter, with "Generic CMYK" as the target profile and transparency flattening, but the printer still says that my PDF is in the RGB color space. If not, is there any other way to create a CMYK PDF from Pages or to convert a RGB PDF or PostScript file to CMYK using ColorSync Utility? Are there any alternatives without purchasing Adobe Acrobat? What about if I first convert images to the CMYK color space before importing them to Pages?
I have seen similar questions posted elsewhere, but I can't find a straight answer anywhere.

1. Obtain the ICC profile from the printer for his output device.
Correct. Either the shop printing condition or an ISO 12647 printing condition to which the shop can configure and calibrate the printing condition it is selling you. If the latter, you can get default ICC printer profiles for standard printing conditions at www.eci.org.
2. Create a filter in ColorSync Utility for generating PDF/X-3 documents with the ICC profile as the output intent (besides flattening the transparency and applying an appropriate resolution).
Correct.
3. Print to PDF in Pages.
Incorrect.
Your PDF/X-3 filter will become available in the system dialog for File > Print > Save as PDF. In saving as PDF you pick your PDF/X-3 filter as the template for the save process.
4. Use ColorSync Utility to modify the resulting PDF with the filter I created in ColorSync Utility.
(or 3-4. Print directly to PDF through the filter from Pages)
Your second step to combine 3 and 4 is correct, your first step 4 to save to disk and then postprocess in the ColorSync utility is incorrect.
5. Send this PDF/X-3 to the printer.
Correct.
It seems that no hard conversion from RGB to CMYK should be necessary if I take these steps, is that correct?
Correct.
If I send the printer a PDF in the RGB color space, should it cause problems for him to convert the PDF himself to the color space of his output device?
No.
You create three channel RGB images in the RGB colourant data model (it's just a model, it is not a colour space which a size and a shape of the gamut).
You save your colourants to disk in TIFF or PDF format with the ICC profile for the capture colour space (e.g. the ICC profile for your specific scanner with a Kodak EktaChrome IT8) or correction colour space (e.g. Joseph Holmes' RGB working space for EktaChrome). This ICC profile is the _colour space_ that you can view in the ColorSync Utility as a specific size and shape of gamut. The colour space determines what colours the colourants in your TIFF or PDF image should reproduce on different colour devices.
You now have a pagination with photographic objects in three component RGB, and you know what colours those colourants are supposed to reproduce. You then include the production profile for the printing condition. Your source profiles must match to this destination profile in the matching session, so all your photographs get converted to the SAME ink limit, the SAME graybalance and so forth. This unifies the inking behaviour and the colour formation for your printing.
If you imagine that in your pagination you place photographs which are manually converted into four component CMYK using a different ink limit, a different graybalance and so forth then you have not unified your inking behavour and colour formation for the printing process. This is IDIOTIC because the only way to correct in this case is to change the calibration of the individual inking zones on the offset press - increasing or decreasing the cyan, magenta, yellow or black for that zone.
It used to be that lithography on the press was the only way to work. This was in the days of EPS and EPS DCS, and before that in the days of photographic printing masters pasted together manually piece by piece to make the printing planes. Nobody in their right mind works that way today.
/hh

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To the best of my knowledge, there is no CMYK Color Space View in the color picker. You determine whether the swatch you create is RGB, CMYK or LAB by clicking in one of the fields of each color model.
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Does anyone know why there is this difference? Also what is the Image Conversion Plug-in and how does it work?

Ah, sorry; in that case possibly the Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities-button was hit (thus including the original psd-file) but a low-res-pdf-setting selected.
In which case the original data would appear to be CMYK and of a higher resolution that the pdf-images.

For P.O.D. Printing: How to Set Adobe RGB Color Space

Hello and thanks in advance,
(I'm using InDesign CS 5.5 on a Mac.)
I need to set the proper PDF export settings
For printing a book on demand, with color drawings inside on the text pages.
The onnly instructions that I have been able to find, say this:
"Submit your graphics in the Adobe RGB color space, withprofile embedded."
The Big Question: How do I do that ?
I know enough to start with
File --> Adobe PDF Presets --> Press Quality
Then I click on the "Output Menu"
and here's where I start to get lost.
for
Color Conversion ...
I think I should select "Convert to Destination"
for
Destination
I think it should be "Adobe RGB (1998)"
Now in order to embed this profile,
What should I select under:
Profile Inclusion Policy ?
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IthacaAuthor (aka ZorbaTheGeek, but the forum would not let me log in with my old screen name)

Virtually all digital printing is done via either PostScript or PDF. In the former case, the PDF is converted to PostScript viat use of Acrobat and in the latter case, the PDF is sent directly to the digital printer.
In either case, CMYK is in fact the actual destination color space. There are no real RGB printers!!! What is true is that non-PostScript / non-PDF printers (typically low end laser and inkjet printers as well as specialized inkjet and dye sublimation photo printers) do take in RGB via drivers and convert that to CMYK, but I don't believe that is what you are dealing with.
Our recommendation at Adobe for best printing results, whether for offset or digital printing, is to export PDF as PDF/X-4 with no color conversion using the default CMYK color space (SWOP CMYK) or if instructed otherwise by your print service provider, one of the other CMYK color spaces provided by Adobe or by the print service provider themselves. FWIW, most on-demand digital print devices do have settings to fully emulate SWOP CMYK printing conditions. Using PDF/X-4 in this manner allows the existing color content in your InDesign document to be properly tagged in the output PDF file and converted to CMYK at the digital printing device's RIP.
(It might also assist us if you can provide a pointer to the explicit instructions provided by your print service provider.)
- Dov

Color space conversion due to transparency ...

Hi there!
Let's assume we have a document that contains two RGB images, one of them is set to 70 % transparency. When printing to PDF, the 70 % transparent RGB image is converted to CMYK, the other one retains its RGB color space ...
I seem to understand that this is due to the current transparency color space setting. I could change that to RGB.
But I wonder: Is there no way to keep the color space here, no matter if it is CMYK or RGB the images are coming with?
Thanks,
Klaus

Klaus,
To learn what happens with flattening and color, you should refer to this excellent document, "Transparency in Adobe Applications: A Print Production Guide."
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/creativesuite/articles/cs3ip_printprodtrans.pdf
Here's are relevant section (page 24):
Printing transparency: step-by-step
When printing a page containing live transparency from InDesign CS3 and the Transparency Blend Space is set to Document CMYK, the following steps will take place (steps 3 and 6 may perform color conversions):
1 Transparency is detected on a spread by the Flattener.
2 The Flattener refers to the Transparency Blend Space setting to determine the appropriate color space in which to blend transparent objects. In this example, Document CMYK was selected. The Document CMYK color space is determined by the active color settings (Edit > Color Settings).
3 Any image that is tagged with a color space that differs from the selected blend space is converted to Document CMYK.
4 The Flattener flattens the transparency.
5 The flattened data is passed to the print engine.
6 The print engine compares the color information in the flattened data with the Printer Profile color space set in the Print dialog box. If the color settings dont match, the print engine converts the colors to the color space indicated by the Printer Profile.
7 The color-managed job is printed.

Color Space Question For Printing

I have multiple newbie questions so please bear with me
Normally when working in photoshop, I tend to use the RGB color space as I need the use of filters and other effects not available in CMYK, Now when printing flyers E.g A4 Sized I tend to save the PSD in RGB (Without Flattening) and then importing it into a CMYK color space in illustrator and then exporting as a PDF, as illustrator gives me the option to create bleed as well as trim marks, I have never exported a PDF from photoshop as it always gives me the option of photoshop pdf which is kinda heavy.
My question is, is the process I use okay for printing? or do I first need to convert it into CMYK? or just export from photoshop itself? Also, the other reason I use illustrator is if i'm making a business card with two sides, since text is better exported from illustrator.
Could anyone tell me a simpler process for creating for digital print? Especially if I need to do some items in illustrator as well.

>> images are still a bit washed out with a warmish/ yellow cast to them, particularly, my black and white images
Here is a simple test to help evaluate if the monitor profile is reasonably good:
Open a RGB file in Photoshop (flatten if not already flattened).
Press M key> Drag a selection> Com+Shift+U (Desaturate).
Com+Z (to toggle back and forth).
If the unsaturated selection looks neutral you've got a reasonably fair monitor profile.
If selection has color casts (not neutral) -- you have a bad monitor profile
+++++
Here is a simple test to help evaluate if a bad monitor profile is whacking out your Photoshop color:
Monitors/Displays (control panel)> Color> highlight AppleRGB or sRGB (don't run Calibrate), quit and reboot.
If the Photoshop colors are back under control, then the problem was most surely a bad monitor profile go back into Monitors/Displays> Color and Calibrate a good profile highlight (load) sRGB, or preferably, the monitor's OEM profile as a starting point.
If you are using a puck, it is likely defective; or your monitor hardware is the culprit...search it on Google by model number

Need CMYK for printer... but msg "document is using CMYK blend space..." concerning

Hello all,
I need to create an output PDF that is CMYK for the printer.
I thought I was doing everything correctly until I got this message that was generated when I selected Export (to PDF), "The document is using CMYK space. Colors are converted to RGB in interactive PDF files. To avoid color changes, click Cancel and choose Document RGB from the Edit > Transparency Blend Space menu. Click OK to continue."
So, I think this means that the PDF export is being saved in an RGB color space. Is that a correct interpretation? If so, how do I preserve the CMYK color space because that is what the commercial printer requires? Is that even possible or relevant?
Thank you

You are a lifesaver!
I was wondering what that "interactive PDF" thing was all about. I didn't release that it was simply an Export As... error. I must have inadvertently selected it at some point.
Thanks a million!

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> ... we uncheck the "Convert CMYK Colors to RGB" check box in order to get our colors to display/print correctly.
That's an illusion. Although Vista SP1 and later appear to have CMYK support in the GDI API, it is reported here that the colors are still jammed to RGB (Monitor RGB) internally, then converted back. If the resulting PS or PDF has CMYK colors, they are unlikely to be exactly what you specified in Frame.
As I understand it, the only ways to color manage in Frame (on Windows) are:
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Exclamation in CMYK color mode

Every time I try to choose a color in CMYK it always gives me the exclamation mark with a color that isn't even close to what I'm trying to use. When I click on the color below the exclamation, it still won't give it to me. What is the purpose of this and how can I get it to give me the proper color?

D3_Designs wrote:
... When I click on the color below the exclamation, it still won't give it to me...
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Why do I get two different RGB equivalents for one CMYK color?

I’m helping someone incorporate their blue logo into business cards and a branding guide. The Illustrator file they gave me of their logo is set to the CMYK color space, so I used these CMYK values for their branding guide. When I click on the RGB tab to see the converted values for the CMYK color, they are insanely different from the RGB equivalent I get when using an online color converter, like Adobe Kuler. In both InDesign and Illustrator, the CMYK values for the blue logo are 79, 56, 2, 0 and when I click on the RGB tab in InDesign or Illustrator, these programs tell me that the RGB equivalent is 69, 112, 179. However, when I use the Adobe Kuler website and plug in the CMYK values, the website (and other websites like it) tell me that the RGB equivalent to this CMYK color is actually 54, 112, 250. I’m not sure which RGB value is actually correct.
That said, I tried plugging in the RGB values I get from the design software into the Adobe Kuler color converter, and I get totally different CMYK values than what the design software tells me. Which color values do I include on the client's branding guide?
I've heard that blue colors are notoriously hard to convert between RGB and CMYK, and I'm wondering if that's why I'm getting these drastically different values from different color conversion tools. I've also read that different ICC profiles might affect the CMYK/RGB values in the design program, but I'm not well-versed in this. Please help!!

the CMYK values for the blue logo are 79, 56, 2, 0 and when I click on the RGB tab in InDesign or Illustrator, these programs tell me that the RGB equivalent is 69, 112, 179.
69|112|179 is the conversion you'll get using the default North American General Purpose Color Settings—or US Web Coated SWOP v2 converted to sRGB. As Willi implies there are many flavors of CMYK and RGB so different sources and destinations, as well as the conversion intent, will produce different results.
So "branding" color this way doesn't really work because 79|56|2|0 CMYK will look very different on newsprint than it will on a GRAcol profiled press with glossy paper, and 69|112|179 RGB will look very different in a CC app with a ProPhoto RGB assignment then it will look in a web browser with no profile assigned.
The best you can do is qualify the values—79|56|2|0 US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 CMYK = 69|112|179 sRGB IEC6196-2.1 RGB

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Excuse my ignorance with the basic nature of this question, I don't use InDesign, but I do have a pressing problem regarding it.
My book publisher has just emailed to say that my photography book has been set for the printers in InDesign and the photographs have AdobeRGB color space (which was what I was aksed to send.) The printer needs the images to be in CMYK. The publisher said that he was "pretty sure Adobe Acrobat converts the InDesign files to CMYK" and that he has sent the printer RGB images in the past and they "came out OK". He said that if this will not work, he needs to convert all of the images separately to CMYK.
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Stephen

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3. To get the highest quality conversions, you might want to do it in Photoshop.
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Hi Sekar
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