Spot-to-CMYK conversion: Pantone vs. ID

I know this is not a new issue, and was discussed here, but more from the point of view of the visual aspect of colors on one's screen.
I'm baffled as to the conversion of spot colors for printing purposes (sheet-fed).... My client wants me to use PMS 322c in a CMYK job, and she's been always very picky about colors and the way they print. The difference in the conversion formulas between ID and using Pantone's website -- is striking.... See how ID has a significant amount of M, yet low K, while Panton suggests ZERO M and lots of K.... So I'm asking, WHO CAN I TRUST???....

Part of the “problem” is that of how you actually represent the Pantone spot colors. Yes, Pantone provide CMYK equivalent values, but in exactly what CMYK color space? According to what I have been told by Pantone, those CMYK values are nominally SWOP.
You didn't indicate what your full workflow looks like, but the most reliable method of dealing with spot colors, whether used as real spot colors (i.e., you actually have those spot color inks at the press) or you are simulating them, is to pass through the spot color information in the PDF file exported from InDesign or at least as LAB colors otherwise. Preferably, you are using a PDF/X-4 workflow.
Bring in the swatch at follows:
The swatch will then look like:
When you export PDF, you have two choices. If you are actually printing spot color or if you don't know whether real spot color inks are available, set the Ink Manager as follows:
In this case, the RIP will use the spot color if available or if not, it will convert Pantone's more precise LAB color values specified as the “alternate color space” to the press' CMYK color space.
If you know that the press definitely won't have the spot colors, set the Ink Manager as follows:
On PDF export, all references to PANTONE 322 C will be output to the PDF with the exact LAB color values which your RIP will convert to CMYK and no references to the spot color at all.
This is the method getting precisely what Pantone defines for the spot colors and how they will look in process color.
Note that many Pantone spot colors cannot precisely be matched in process color simply because such colors are outside the gamut of whatever process CMYK color space your printing workflow supports.
- Dov

Similar Messages

CS5.5 & CS6 Spot to CMYK conversion not matching Pantone + Guide book

Hey,
I have both cs5.5 & cs6 indesign both of which are giving me different values of cmyk compared against the Pantone + guide, eg if I select pms 173C and convert to cmyk the values are not correct when I check the values in the book is there a way to fix this, other wise it will be highly annoying to have to manually put in the cmyk values for each job when matching spot colours for digital prints. Any help /suggestions or if there is any settings to change?
Cheers.
Jack.

In CS6 the Pantone solid libraries are always defined as Lab—as far as I can tell the Ink Manager's Use Standard Lab Values no longer has any effect.
So these libraries are now defined as Spot colors with Lab definitons–if you convert the spots to process via Ink Manager your document's CMYK profile makes a color managed conversion:
If for some reason you want a predefined CMYK mix (but for what press or device?) there is Color Bridge Coated and Uncoated—those colors are defined as process CMYK. So you could delete PANTONE 173 C and replace it with Color Bridge Coated PANTONE 173 CP.

3 Adobe Programs give me inconsistent numbers when covert to CMYK from Pantone Pantone+ Solid Coated?

3 Adobe Programs give me inconsistent numbers when covert to CMYK from Pantone Pantone+ Solid Coated?
I need help on figure out how to have exact number value when I use 3 programs, Adobe InDesign CS6, Illustrator CS 6,
And PhotoShop CS 6, and use PMS Swatch from Pantone+ Solid Coated in each program, and convert Pantone Color to CMYK,
the numbers are different significantly. I attached the example of how I converted PMS 424C to CMYK to illustrate.

In CS6 and later the conversion of Pantone+ Solids to CMYK is color managed (Lab to CMYK), so the document's assigned CMYK profile and the app's Color Settings Conversion Options (Intent and Black Point Compensation) affect the conversion numbers and have to be matched up.
So below the assigned profile is Coated Fogra39 with a Relative Colormetric Intent and BPC turned on (the slight differences are because of the way the 3 programs round):
I think InDesign has a problem with color conversions via the Color panel, so I'm showing the InDesign Sep Preview panel with All Spots to Process checked in Ink Manager on the right. Changing the document's CMYK profile assignment doesn't reliably produce the correct conversion via the Color panel—looks like a bug and I haven't checked CC to see if it's been fixed.
Here is what I get with a conversion via the Color panel. l'm not sure where these numbers are coming from but it's not the right conversion to Fogra39:
The tool bar's Color Picker does make the correct conversion, so I think the problem is limited to the Color panel
The simplest approach is to leave Pantone Solids as spot colors and use Ink Manager to make the conversion when you export or print.

Who should do rgb-CMYK conversion - designers or printers?

I have been having a very interesting discussion on a previous thread in response to problems with the colour conversion from rgb to CMYK using InDesign and the resulting unsatisfactory colours in the final magazine delivered by my printers.
This has raised a number of issues and led me to further research. I would like to air these for a wider debate hence this post.
Perceptive readers will note from my spelling of colour, that I am English and indeed I work out of the UK. I am a historian, writer, photographer and editor. These days it is as a full time freelance but for a long time I was part time when I helped my partner publish a specialist sports magazine.
We started it a long time ago, in the days when you sent a typesetter galleys of type and photos and agreed on a layout. Our typesetters migrated to Pagemaker and we went with them. They and we were PC based and we still are, which is a bit of an anomaly in the design world.
Creating the text in Word was easy enough but the images remained a problem before digital cameras. We had a scanner but it was a flat bed scanner and created rgb images. The printers needed they said CMYK images then only available using cylindrical professional quality scanners. So there was a period when we paid the printers to scan the images for us, from the original photos, paying per print.
One of our small amateur publishing team was a well known professional photographer, so we started out with some high quality images but even so the scanned results, as they appeared in print, were patchy. I particularly remember one feature, covering a major international event where we had been supplied with high quality transparencies by a top class sports photographer and we duly passed on to the printers to scan. The results were clearly out of focus and the photographer was enraged and said he would not work for us again.
Of course we got proofs but they were low resolution in general and when we queried the quality of any image, we were invariably told that the proof did not reflect the final quality image as it would be printed. Trouble was it often did.
We ourselves continued to strip out costs from the magazine and eventually one of our team went on a series of Pagemaker courses and got some hands on experience working next to our former typesetter who was coming up for retirement. We took over the design and found a sympathetic new printer, down the road, also familiar with Pagemaker where we could pop over to look at the proofs, and get a second scan if the first was not OK. All went happily along for quite a few years. The sports magazine got sold and then I got a contract to edit a magazine dealing with the historic environment. By now digital photography had come along but we simply supplied hard copy prints (we use a lot of historical images) or digital images to the printers, with the Pagemaker files and they did the conversion. This routine stayed in place for a few more years and then the owner of the printers sold up and retired.
We found a new printers', a short run magazine specialist who agreed to accept our Pagemaker files (by now 6.5) although they were primarily Quark and Apple based. They did have a handful of PC clients and kept one PC for proofing their work. We continued to send the new printers Pagemaker files for printing and included the source images in case they needed to be redone. It quickly became apparent that the new printers worked down to a price rather than up to a quality and a fast turn around was the main aim. Conversations with their chief designer were perfunctory but because we had a lot of Pagemaker expertise we did not need a lot of support. We were under pressure to move to InDesign and it was probably time anyway.
Around two years ago matters can to a head with a font problem. This turned out to be a known issue with Pagemaker but resolving it caused problems with the printers, who said we had to upgrade to InDesign and it would go away. We were also assured that if we did so, and supplied them with a .pdf from InDesign, we could get a guaranteed result. We were told not to send them any more source images for comparison but to provide CMYK images. How we converted them was up to us.
Our designer went on several InDesign courses but they dealt with the design process and differences from Pagemaker. Getting to a .pdf was the target, not balancing colour thereafter. That was considered the role of the printer and his workflow press press processes.
When we needed to export our first .pdf from InDesign, the chief designer called up our designer and talked him through it. The importance of compatible profiles and presets was never raised. We have never been given any written information by the printers on .pdf presets or profiles we might need to set up at our end. As explained in my earlier thread, we are now required to submit all our images already converted to CMYK and this has caused and continues to cause, problems with the colour balance, in general the final result has too much magenta in it. Matters came to a head with the latest issue.
We are in talks with the printers to resolve this but it seems the chief designer has now left and not been replaced. We have asked if they can do the colour conversion to CMYK for us and the answer has been a definitive "No". Approaches to other printers has met witha standard salesman's response that all we need to provide is a .pdf from InDesign and they will do the rest. All require CMYK images.
It seems to me in all this saga, that the printing community has been busy de-skilling and downsizing and putting responsibilities back onto the end user wwho may not be experienced enough in the area of prepress and colour, to understand the issues involved.
So the question then arises, why can't the printers do the rgb to CMYK conversion anymore? Our printers maintain they are not able to accept any work which requires them to do this. But reading around the subject it seems there are printers who are moving to handling the rgb conversions for their customers "late binding rgb workflow" I think it is called. This is a link to a very interesting article about it in Print Media Management (I assume I can put links here). http://www.printmediamag.co.uk/technical-articles/205.aspx
What does anyone else think about this as a concept?

Just after the turn of the century I was working for a large-format output service. ID had just been released, but nobody used it, and Quark 4 was state of the art. Color management was a "new" concept to everyone I knew.
One of our vendors sold us paper with the promise that they could provide profiles for every stock to match our HP plotter (not that I think we would have necessarily, at that point, understood how to use them). They never managed to do that, and we never managed to match color from the same file on glossy and matte papers. Nor were we able to reliably match color that we saw on screen or in a customer's inkjet or laser proof without making test strips and using five or six times the paper in trial and error adjustments as it took to make a single poster the customer ordered. It was ridiculous, and expensive, and it convinced me that I needed to learn at least the basics of color management. Shortly after I left that job and went freelance.
I switched to InDesign partly because it actually handled color management better than Quark in those days (and may still -- I've never looked back and stopped buying upgrades at 6.5), and I read as much as I could (Real World Color Management from Peachpit Press is an EXCELLENT and easy to understand primer). I also found a local printer for offset where the prepress manager understands CM and profiling, and was willing to talk (we're now good friends), and I also found another large format service where the staff was CM literate. I use a colorimeter to calibrate and profile my monitor, I use the output profiles they recommend and the export settings they ask for, and what I see in print from these vendors "matches my screen as close as dammit," to use the OP's words.
The owner of the offset printery said something I found flattering, but a little shocking, the last time I went for a press check -- I supply the best color in files that need the least amount of adjustment on press of anyone they print for. My attitude is if the print is off at make-ready, it means my numbers are off, and that was my fault. I usually complain the reds aren't bright enough, then let the pressman convince me that if I tweak the reds too much I'll lose the blues and to have confidence that things will fall into place when the ink dries because his measure ink density numbers are where they should be. He's always right, by the way.
Is this shop unusual? Maybe a little for my neck of the woods, but there are plenty of them out there with the same dedication to keeping up with technology at the pre-press end, and the knowledge and experience with putting ink on paper and a commitment to quality and service, so you should be able to find someone almost anywhere. And size is not necessarily an indicator -- this printer is a mom-and-pop shop with two presses, a folder, and a half-dozen employees. Dad has been in the print business for about 40 years and knows only what's rubbed off about color management, but he knows about presses and ink and paper and what will work. The oldest son is the prepress tech, and he's a complete geek, and either one of them will talk to anyone, and wish more of their clients would take the time to ask questions about the printing process and file preparation, and how they can improve the quality of both what comes in and what goes back out.

Distiller X vs. Distiller 8/9 RGB - CMYK conversion

1) I have a simple EPS file (that I created in CorelDraw, but I get the same results with other software, too) that contains a single RGB red (r = 255, g = 0, b = 0) square.
2) I open Acrobat Distiller, set it to use the PDF/A-1b:2005 (CMYK) joboptions, and then open and convert the EPS to PDF.
3) I now open the resulting PDF in Acrobat and use Output Preview to see what the RGB -> CMYK conversion did, using the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 profile.
If I do the above with Acrobat 8.3.1 on a Windows XP system, the result is 0% C, 99% M, 100% Y, 0% K.
(I don't currently have a computer with 9.x installed, but a friend who does gets the same results.)
If I do the above with Acrobat 10.1.3 on a Windows 7 system, the result is 0% C, 96% M, 95% Y, 0% K.
Using Acrobat 10.1.3, if I open the EPS file directly (so that the conversion to PDF is performed automatically), and then use Convert Colors to convert to CMYK, I get the same results that Distiller 8.3.1 gives me.
What is going on? I cannot find anything to explain why Distiller 10 behaves differently from Distiller 9 and earlier.
-Steve

Hi
"I'm sorry, is not enough to English"
This problem for correct "primarily RGB color space add document"
I am prepared add video lesson... wait me

Color Conversion from Spot to CMYK

How are you able to convert spot colors to the correct color bridge numbers in when rasterizing an eps file? It appears to be driven by color settings,
but no matter what is selected, the numbers are never correct.

Depends what you mean by 'correct' as there are several models and possible correct answers...
A spot colour is often outside the gamut of cmyk and therefore will look different to the spot and there are different ways to come to a representative colour, so there is no 'correct' numbers, it is a subjective assessment.
If you can find a conversion environment that gives a good 'look' then that is correct, for you...

Adobe Illustrator: Neon Pantone to CMYK Conversion

So I am working with a client who is going to be making keychains. She wants neon colors, so in Illustrator, I used the Pantone colors 801-814 which are supposed to be neon. I know that those will not show up accurately on the computer screen (They show up pastel-looking). I wanted to convert the colors to CMYK so that she can print it out and see a close comparison. But when I converted it to CMYK, it stayed that same dull/pastel color--both on the computer screen and when I printed it. My confusion is that I thought when you convert Pantone to CMYK it's supposed to convert to a color closest to the actual Pantone and not what you see on screen, yet that is exactly what I got when i printed the converted CMYK.

sgchun,
You can hardly get further away from the CMYK gamut (the range of colours obtainable with CMYK inks) than neon colours.

INDESIGN CS6 : wrong spot to process conversion using L*A*B system

The separation process of spot colors (PMS) using the L*A*B values is completely out of range with my ripping system (polkadots). Previously with CS5 and the CMYK process, PMS 300 was broke with C100 M56 Y00 K00 values.
In the new CS6, the same Pantone is broken with C100 M65 Y28 K00 values, which is completely out of the range. I encountered the same error on a very big job, which cost me 1 ton of paper…
I tried to force the CMYK separation in the INK MANAGER menu, but it doesn't work properly.
Is there another way to fix it ? Is there any chance to go back and use a good, reliable, CMYK separation system with CS6 ?

Now maybe we should talk about your color management. In theory the LAB mixes should be working better than book values, IF you have the correct color profiles in place for your equipment.
Are you sure about the 28% yellow—I don't see that much yellow with any document CMYK profile.
The conversion from the Lab values depends on your document's CMYK profile and the Color Setting's Conversion Options. Europe ISO with Relative Colormetric and Black Point Compensation turned on returns 100|58|0|0, while US SWOP Perceptual with Black Point off returns 100|65|13|1. So as Peter mentions you have to have the correct profile in place for Lab conversions to work.
I'm working with ISO coated V2 profiles, based on FOGRA, modified ISO 12647-2, specific profiles for printers, designed to limit inkage up to 300%. My RIP is working with the document profile, but has no device link installed.
Thanks anyway for your help, that's fine, works good !!!

AI CS3 PMS- CMYK conversions

I am trying to convert my PMS 296C to a process color.
Why does the default conversion not match my PMS solid to process book?
The AI conversion is
C10
M4
Y0
K70
The PMS book conversion is
C100
M73
Y30
K83
Am I missing something?
Thanks!

If you take a look at a Pantone "Solid-to-Process" swatch book, very few, if any CMYKs match their Spot counterparts. There are some that come close. In Pantone's defense, there has to be some standards and they've done a good job standardizing something so objective as color. I've been involved with some fairly radical printing devices where I had to match Pantone Spot color using CMYK and in all cases I had to build custom CMYKs, as well as standard equivalents for comparison due to the limitations of the combination of print device + media substrate deviates, + atmospheric conditions ( i.e., temp, humidity, etc. ).
That said, all of the custom builds were compared to the Pantone Spot color swatch. That is the standard, "Known" factor in the process. We had a customer who specified a given Pantone Spot color and it was my job to match that color using the limitations of the CMYK printing process in my given workflow. The customer did not say, hmmm, how about a warm medium red? No that would be too arbitrary. They specified a specific Pantone Spot color number.
Chris, I'm not sure what you mean by "appearance"? And what do you mean by "wrong" color? We can agree that there are some CMYKs that do not match their Pantone Spot color swatch, but they've shown you what to expect using the process color equivalents in a CMYK offset printing process. Those are industry standards that most press operators use on a daily basis, but they themselves have to deal with different stock colors, whereas the white paper they are using probably isn't the same white color used in the swatch book. To assume it is would be totally unrealistic. Does a different white paper's "Brightness" affect the color? Absolutely. It's just another variable in the process. Does a 2002 Heidelberg print the same way as a 2009 GTO Heidelberg? I doubt it.

CMYK/RGB/Pantone: Which one to use?

I am not a graphic designer by training but just started a job which requires me to get up to speed (and fast!) on creating collateral from scratch all the way to printing. As you can probably imagine, I've been reading forums, books, and watching video tutorials to learn as fast as possible. That said, I still don't have a definitive answer for the following questions:
When creating documents that will be posted online and printed:Should I create it in a RGB or CMYK color profile?
RGB has a wider color gamut than CMYK…so is it just safer (for consistency) to always create documents in CMYK color profile (and convert to RGB for online PDFs later...or is it even necessary to convert?)?
On the other hand, RGB is able to show pictures more vibrantly...so is it better to create documents in RGB and convert to CMYK for print? What about out of gamut colors (do you have to adjust "by eye" to get it as close as possible)?
Can you be in a situation where you have a CMYK document profile but the colors or photos are in RGB color space? And vice versa?
If the company’s logo colors must be as accurate as possible, do you recommend using Pantone colors in a document that needs to be printed? (on that note, what is the difference between Pantone spot and Pantone process?)
Converting color profiles:Do you convert the whole document from RGB to CMYK (or vice versa) or convert each bit of colored text and artwork individually?
I know this is a bit all over the place, but thank you so much for your help!

Hi,
You'd better make your work in a reasonably wide mode but keeping an eye in the most likely output ways. That is: You'd better work with a reasonable editing RGB space but you have to visualize (softproof) constantly what you are doing in the kind of colour you're going to print at the end. So, if have pictures in Adobe RGB or sRGB for a litho offset job in coated paper that is best described with... lets say SWOP Coated blah. blah... You work the picturtes in that RGB space but you softproof your work with that particular CMYK color space before converting anything. And nowadays you usually convert only if your printer gives you the OK to use that CMYK profile to make a ready for print PDF. All this said taking for granted you are working in a reasonably decent screen that has been calibrated with some kind of colorimetre (and they are cheap enough. If you don't have one, go get it).
Forget about vibrant colors and what you see in screen. WYSIWYG is a myth in this sense. You've to think What I See Is What Is Will Print (As Crappy As It Might Be). Some print modes are good (coated offset) and some are ****** (newsprint). Such is printing life. The sooner you realize your limits the better results you'll get with the tools at hand.
InDesign is ready to deal with documents that have pieces in some different color spaces. No trouble... as long as you view them all in the same softproof mode... You'll be using the One Ring of the Proper Viewing Space.
Special inks (Pantone spot colors) are a powerful tool but they can be used only when the budget and the printing conditions make that use sensible. Use them sparingly but without fear, show your colours then.
If you are using a mixed color spaces document with many pages (InDesign typical situation), you convert everything just at the end when makin the final PDF... Unless you have some special pictures or pieces you want to deal with special care. Then you make by hand conversion taking extracare no to lose anything you want to keep. It's a question of workflow: Labour time against quality in balance.
If you have to convert images, that is done in Photoshop with, as I said, the proper use of spftproffing. You may find, for instance, in a situation where you prefer to lose some tones in the blues to keep some shades in a red robe... But there is masking for that as well.
Lots of things to learn in this trade. Welcome to hell ;P
Gustavo (Posting from quite sunny Madrid)

How to convert CMYK to Pantone?

I have a document with 10+ images that need to be 2-color, black and a Pantone ink. (These are not duotone images; each one is grayscale with certain parts of the image colored in the Pantone ink. Think of a grayscale face with red lips.) I first converted these to grayscale and then selected a Pantone ink color and colored parts of the image using the paint bucket, etc. However, my printer said that they cannot print these from my 2-color InDesign document because the images are CMYK and that Photoshop cannot separate two colors unless you use Duotone. I don't want them duotone as only certain parts of the photos should be colored. The only solution I know would be to insert the gray images without color into my InDesign document and then try to color them with the InDesign tools, which would be really difficult. Please help! There must be another way.

You can do this a few ways. Your best would be to create a grayscale doc with the black ink, and then in the channels panel flyout menu (to the right of "channels"), create a new spot color. Assign it the Pantone number by clicking on the little square to the right of "color" and then the color libraries button. Paint in that instead. If you need the ink to be overprinted by black then it should be quite simple. Otherwise, you can use the black channel to knockout parts of the spot by ctrl-clicking on the black channel, inversing the selection, and then filling with white.
If they balk at this file saved as a TIF (with "spot channels" checked when you save) or PSD, you can go to image > mode > multichannel, and try saving it as a DCS2.0. The printer might have better luck with this (but try TIF or PSD first).
If the printer can't handle a file like this, your next bet is a CMYK file where the black channel holds the black in values, and the C, M or Y channel holds the spot values. Then anything else in the layout file that should be spot needs to be painted C, M or Y.

CMYK to CMYK conversion Dmax warning

Found an error in the way Photoshop converts from one CMYK profile to another CMYK profile....
When converting from RGB or LAB to CMYK, photoshop will follow the Dmax settings of the CMYK profile you are converting to. However, if you convert from a CMYK file with a high Dmax to another CMYK profile with a lower Dmax setting, your new file will NOT have the lower Dmax.
For example, If I convert a CMYK file with a 340 Dmax to a CMYK profile with a 300 Dmax, the colors will shift but the new file will have a Dmax of 340, NOT 300.
The only solution to this is to convert from CMYK to LAB, then back to your new CMYK profile. Then photoshop will use the correct Dmax settings.
I know you shouldn't convert from CMYK to CMYK, etc etc. But sometimes it isn't avoidable for various workflow reasons. And I understand why photoshop is unable to convert to the new Dmax when you're going from CMYK to CMYK. But, I feel that this is such a critical color issue that photoshop should warn you that to get a propper Dmax, you can't go from CMYK to CMYK.
It seems that anyone who is working with CMYK should be extremely concerned about Dmax, so for Photoshop to not warn you about this issue is to invite serious color problems which may not be caught until you're going to press... which is a very stressful time to make such discoveries.
Thanks!!!

Chris-
I figured out what is going on... we're both right. Photoshop does properly change the CMYK profile and dmax when you are converting to a new profile, IF the file you are converting from has an embedded profile.
However, it is fairly common in closed CMYK workflows to not embed the icc profile due to conflicts with other parts of the process. When you try to convert an image that does not have an embeded profile, Photoshop assumes the "mystery" image has the working CMYK profile.
Since the assumed profile, and the destination profile were the same, it did no conversion (or merely assigned the profile) even though you had selected "Convert to ...."
This resulted in images which were outside the Dmax of the CMYK profile we had converted to....because it didn't actually convert.
There are 3 ways around this.
(1) You can include the embeded profile, and Photoshop will do the propper conversion.
(2) You can Change your working CMYK profile to the profile of the image you are converting, and photoshop will assume (correctly) that it is the working profile.
(3) You can convert the image to LAB or RGB and then to the desired CMYK profile, however this will only work properly if you tell photoshop which profile you are starting from... otherwise it may assume the incorrect profile. This will end up with an image which conforms to the desired color space, however you may get extremely undesirable color shifts due to the incorrect assumptions about the initial color space.
So, the question becomes, is this a case where Photoshop should protect the user from themselves? Should photoshop be checking when it converts an image with no embeded profile to make sure the resulting file conforms to the destination color space? It sort of does with the profile warning dialogs which are turned on by default... but everyone I know turns those off as soon as they start using photoshop.
Does this happen in RGB too? For example, if my working RGB profile is sRBG, is photoshop going to assume an unknown color profile to be sRGB? So when I output for web use, is it actually converting an unknown color profile to sRGB, or is it merely assigning like it does with CMYK?
I'm pretty sure this is what's going on, let me know if I've made any mistakes in my assumptions.
Thanks!
-Mark

[AI 10]How to create a Spot Swatch(CMYK&RGB)?

Hi,
Please tell how to create a spot color swatch & add it to the swatches pallette in Illustrator 10.
I want to specify the swatches name,color(CMYG,RGB)& type(Spot or Process).
I tried the following itdoes not give the desired output:
AICustomColor customData;
AICustomColorHandle newColor;
strcpy((char*)customData.name ,"PANTONE 119 C");
customData.c.f.cyan = 0.75;
customData.c.f.magenta =0;
customData.c.f.yellow = 0.50;
customData.c.f.black = 0;
customData.flag = kCustomSpotColor;
customData.kind = kCustomFourColor;
error = sAIColor->NewCustomColor(&customData,&newColor );
AIDocumentHandle document = NULL;
error = sDocument->GetDocument(&document);
AISwatchListRef swatchList;
error = sAISwatch->GetSwatchList(document, &swatchList);
AISwatchRef swatch = NULL;
swatch = sAISwatch->GetSwatchByName(swatchList, (char*)customData.name);
swatch = sAISwatch->InsertNthSwatch(swatchList, 3);
error = sAISwatch->SetSwatchName(swatch, (char*)customData.name);
AIColor aicolor;
aicolor.kind=kCustomColor;
aicolor.c.c.tint = 0.75;
aicolor.c.c.color = newColor;
error = sAISwatch->SetAIColor(swatch, &aicolor);
Please suggest where i go wrong?
Myriaz

I'm afraid this outside of my realm of expertise, having never tried this. Hopefully someone else can lend a hand here.

RAL colours colors to CMYK conversion

I already posted times ago the request for a colour book integration into Illustrator for the missing RAL colours.
I don't know in the US, nut in Europe it's widely used, and every colour shop has RAL colours.
Therofore for those people, and me too :-), if you need a conversion you can use this link
http://www.centromedia.com/download/ral-colors.pdf

Real professionals knows that RAL colours are used in painting. can't you immagine how to use them in Illustrator? How bad.
Gernot Hoffmann and Jacob Bugge can't you immagine how to use a RAL colour book to print printingplants or simply a draft copy on paper?
Why don't you ask Adobe to delete Pantone Metal colors ? Gernot Hoffmann don't metal colours exceed RGB working spaces ?
It's a useful add-on for every professional, if you don't need it don't use it.
Make a contructive forum and add useful info's instead saying a colour book isn't useful in a painting-design program.

CMYK Conversion

I recently photographed a set of pastels in raw. The body of work has been reviewed and the final color balance has been approved by the artist. I now need to export the images from their raw files to CMYK. to provide for offset printing. Adobe provides a number of options. I am completely lost on the options to select. Can you help me?
The Source Space is Adobe RGB 1998
The Color Space Conversion Options are:
Conversion Options
Engne:
    Adobe (ACE)
    Microsoft ICM
    Adobe CMM
Intent:
    Perceptual
    Saturation
    Relative Colorimetric
    Absolute Colorimetric
Selections with Selection Boxes
    Use Black Point Compensation
    Use Dither
And, of course there is a CMYK Set of selection options that I assume are based on the paper the printer will use.
Do you have a recommendation on the Engine, Intent, Black Point, and Dither.
Thank you

I'm not that terribly knowledgeable at all in these areas, actually; they're really just random bits and pieces I learned over time from others and through what little work we do on that end (one of our clients is actually a print machine manufacturer, so you see the connection... ) Regarding the color conversion, just leave everything as it is. Use the Adobe engine and use Relative Colorimetric. It does all the necessary technical tricks. One would e.g. only use Perceptual, if a specific printing process got involved and/or you would want to create/ retain a very specific color by doing further adjustments in CMYK mode. Black point compensation should always be used to produce the correct "rich blacks" or in reverse, avoid oversaturating your dark colors and muddying your other colors. Again one would only turn this option off if you planned to extensively manually mangle your CMYK file and thus tweak the resulting densities. Whether or not you provide 16bit images depends on the image content and how you print it. Generally the gamut of CMYK work is nowhere near 16bit, but some facilities can use the extended color range to produce extra separations e.g. for inkjet printing with more than the 4 CMYK inks that produce finer tones. It's mostly irrelevant for mass offset printing, though, so using 8bit files will do just fine. It's really more critical to not introduce any clipping or other artifacts during the conversion.
Mylenium

Spot-to-CMYK conversion: Pantone vs. ID

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