Color settings out of Illustrator

[jonkovach]

When saving a PDF out of Illustrator (or InDesign, for that matter), I have the following settings (attached). I am not sure if I have it set up the best way possible. Could someone take a look at it for me?

For my color settings, I have it set to US Prepress Defaults, as most people set their files up according to that. Plus, if there are embedded profiles - I want to maintain those. SO, that is what I have that set up as.

When I go to PDF, I have it set for no conversion and to include tagged profiles. I am not sure if this is going to give me the best results on Onyx.

In Onyx, I use 3M Matchprint for the CMYK profile (I find this to be one of the largest CMYK gamuts) and Adobe 1998 for RGB. Both vector and image. Perceptual rendering intent for both.

Based on all this - would you change anything if it were your shop? I have been having problems with transparency boxes lately, and other drop shadow/gradient issues... not sure if it relates to these color settings or not....

Thanks for any advice,
Jon

[Kevin Stallibrass]

(01-26-2010 01:32 PM)jonkovach Wrote:  Based on all this - would you change anything if it were your shop? I have been having problems with transparency boxes lately, and other drop shadow/gradient issues... not sure if it relates to these color settings or not....
Thanks for any advice,
Jon

Hi,
There are two things that are raised by this, firstly if you are choosing a profile set in Onyx and not enabling embedded profiles, your colour settings in Illustrator will not affect your final colour output, rather, it can introduce a variation between what you see on the monitor and the final print. If you do enable the embedded profiles both in Illustrator and Onyx, you've effectively handed colour control back to your customer which is - shall we say not ideal?
My prefered method is to use a really generic setting for everything. I have a pair of input profiles, one for RGB the other CMYK. I use these in Onyx with no embedded profiles allowed. To make sure I have a reasonable screenmatch, I also use these profiles in Illustrator, Photoshop etc. This was, in the past a common setting utilising the Onyx default RGB and CMYK profiles though these could not be used in the design prog. The two profiles are matched quite well in terms of colour space (the CMYK profile is a modified 3m matchprint) and therefore the RGB profile is less saturated than Adobe RGB 1998. Nevertheless, the results are very real and photo like with excellent neutral tones.
If you want to have a play with these profiles you will find them at http://www.roberthorneprofiles.co.uk follow the link to input profiles.

The second issue is in regard to the odd transparency boxes. Think of it this way, you have an image that contains a layer with an RGB image aboove another layer with a cmyk image above the background with a spot colour. You create a blend or bitmap effect to make one image shade to another and introduce a glow or drop shadow. When saving this image for print, the application has to blend from one colour space to another, to yet another and do all kinds of clever things to get this information into a file format that (may) not have the instruction set to hold it.
The colour settings you chose in your application as well as the blending settings will have a great effect on this.
When Onyx gets hold of this file, it has again to interpret it before the final render and again the PS rip settings will have a bearing. Many times it works OK but others...
For this reason Onyx are now recommending (word of mouth, I have yet to see it written anywhere) a CMYK workflow when using PDF's combined with a standard set of PS rip settings. This is what is installed with the latest 7.3.2 patch.
For my own work, using the generic workflow above, I happily use both RGB and CMYK within PDF then if I see an issue, save it instead as EPS level3. That normally sorts it.
I stand ready to be shot down in flames regarding the workflow but hey - it works well for me and my Onyx install base
Regards
Kevin

[jonkovach]

Kevin,

Thanks for your response - I read it over, carefully, and still have more questions. More of a dialog, than anything else. I'm just trying to get a handle on how other people utilize profiles and overcome printing issues as it relates to CMYK/RGB/Spot colors.

Quote:There are two things that are raised by this, firstly if you are choosing a profile set in Onyx and not enabling embedded profiles, your colour settings in Illustrator will not affect your final colour output, rather, it can introduce a variation between what you see on the monitor and the final print. If you do enable the embedded profiles both in Illustrator and Onyx, you've effectively handed colour control back to your customer which is - shall we say not ideal?

So if you have Illustrator/InDesign set to "Include Tagged Source Profiles"... what is tagged stays tagged with it's profile, and what is untagged stays untagged, to ultimately be converted to your set profiles in Onyx. With this on, you are, as you say, handing the color management back to the customer. However, if you don't, you are effectively converting all their set profiles to yours. And if they are using a specific profile set, and you are using something different, it could cause unexpected results, could it not? Also, if you have Onyx set to include embedded profiles, it will honor the profiles in the file, regardless of what you have set in Onyx.

Quote:My prefered method is to use a really generic setting for everything. I have a pair of input profiles, one for RGB the other CMYK. I use these in Onyx with no embedded profiles allowed.

Setting Onyx to disallow embedded profiles will toss whatever profiles are set in the files away, and convert everything to whatever you have set in Onyx, correct? So it will take everything as if the original color space is unknown, even if it is not...

Quote:To make sure I have a reasonable screenmatch, I also use these profiles in Illustrator, Photoshop etc. This was, in the past a common setting utilising the Onyx default RGB and CMYK profiles though these could not be used in the design prog. The two profiles are matched quite well in terms of colour space (the CMYK profile is a modified 3m matchprint) and therefore the RGB profile is less saturated than Adobe RGB 1998. Nevertheless, the results are very real and photo like with excellent neutral tones.

So, in essence, the RGB gamut is cut down to closely match the CMYK profile? In your workflow, if customer files come in (let's say it is an InDesign file)... what do you do to disregard their profiles? Do you have InDesign's export settings to not include embedded profiles? Do you have InDesign convert to your destination profile (being the above mentioned CMYK profile)? Or do you apply the RGB and CMYK profiles to each image/vector file, and then export with embedded profiles?

Quote:For this reason Onyx are now recommending (word of mouth, I have yet to see it written anywhere) a CMYK workflow when using PDF's combined with a standard set of PS rip settings. This is what is installed with the latest 7.3.2 patch.

What exactly is a CMYK workflow, and how do you not utilize CMYK and RGB? Do you have to go into each image/vector file and convert them individually to CMYK? Or is there a main setting in InDesign to convert everything to CMYK? And by utilizing a CMYK workflow only, does this convert all spot colors to process colors? If so, I really can't make that change.

Quote:For my own work, using the generic workflow above, I happily use both RGB and CMYK within PDF then if I see an issue, save it instead as EPS level3. That normally sorts it.

Just to clarify, you export out of InDesign/Illustrator as an EPS file, instead of a PDF? Do you have any other issues that arise due to this? Why don't you just export everything as EPS?

Sorry for all the questions - hopefully you don't mind. If you do, you can just respond with "meh"... and I'll understand completely! I'm hoping to learn something here.

Thanks,
Jon

[Kevin Stallibrass]

Hi Jon,
No problems at all. Hope you can make sense of my comments in this format

jonkovach Wrote:

Kevin Stallibrass Wrote:There are two things that are raised by this, firstly if you are choosing a profile set in Onyx and not enabling embedded profiles, your colour settings in Illustrator will not affect your final colour output, rather, it can introduce a variation between what you see on the monitor and the final print. If you do enable the embedded profiles both in Illustrator and Onyx, you've effectively handed colour control back to your customer which is - shall we say not ideal?

So if you have Illustrator/InDesign set to "Include Tagged Source Profiles"... what is tagged stays tagged with it's profile, and what is untagged stays untagged, to ultimately be converted to your set profiles in Onyx. With this on, you are, as you say, handing the color management back to the customer. However, if you don't, you are effectively converting all their set profiles to yours. And if they are using a specific profile set, and you are using something different, it could cause unexpected results, could it not? Also, if you have Onyx set to include embedded profiles, it will honor the profiles in the file, regardless of what you have set in Onyx.

Reply: All your assumptions are correct. What I'm doing is effectively throwing the customers settings in the bin. It's an unfortunate fact that many or most of the incoming work I deal with has embedded profiles that are chosen either for a better look on their screen, suitability for an internal workflow or lack of knowledge, certainly not for print reproduction. There are naturally times when the customer sets it right but even when this work is printed with my 'wrong' profiles the work is acceptable to the customer. One thing I have noticed with my settings is that although 95% of the work is fine, the other 5% is on a different planet so it's really easy to spot a problem. If your customers are correctly using profiles then you should NOT use these generics. This is a system merely to get most work saleable first time from a wide range of files. Don't think of these generics as 'poor' profiles. I have a utility that allows me to print an IT8 target with any profile and then measure and calculate the deltaE of each patch. Compared to most standard profiles these generics give a closer match to the IT8 target.

jonkovach Wrote:

Kevin Stallibrass Wrote:My prefered method is to use a really generic setting for everything. I have a pair of input profiles, one for RGB the other CMYK. I use these in Onyx with no embedded profiles allowed.

Setting Onyx to disallow embedded profiles will toss whatever profiles are set in the files away, and convert everything to whatever you have set in Onyx, correct? So it will take everything as if the original color space is unknown, even if it is not...

Reply: Correct - nasty but in my case, most time right

jonkovach Wrote:

Kevin Stallibrass Wrote:To make sure I have a reasonable screenmatch, I also use these profiles in Illustrator, Photoshop etc. This was, in the past a common setting utilising the Onyx default RGB and CMYK profiles though these could not be used in the design prog. The two profiles are matched quite well in terms of colour space (the CMYK profile is a modified 3m matchprint) and therefore the RGB profile is less saturated than Adobe RGB 1998. Nevertheless, the results are very real and photo like with excellent neutral tones.

So, in essence, the RGB gamut is cut down to closely match the CMYK profile? In your workflow, if customer files come in (let's say it is an InDesign file)... what do you do to disregard their profiles? Do you have InDesign's export settings to not include embedded profiles? Do you have InDesign convert to your destination profile (being the above mentioned CMYK profile)? Or do you apply the RGB and CMYK profiles to each image/vector file, and then export with embedded profiles?

Reply: In any of the adobe progs, I set the default profiles to mine and if prompted, also choose mine. Yes the RGB space is smaller than possible but imagine a job of a line of images on a plain background. One image is RGB, the rest CMYK. Using Adobe98 for RGB results in that image being brighter, punchier than the CMYK images so it looks out of place. This does not happen with my profiles.

jonkovach Wrote:

Kevin Stallibrass Wrote:For this reason Onyx are now recommending (word of mouth, I have yet to see it written anywhere) a CMYK workflow when using PDF's combined with a standard set of PS rip settings. This is what is installed with the latest 7.3.2 patch.

What exactly is a CMYK workflow, and how do you not utilize CMYK and RGB? Do you have to go into each image/vector file and convert them individually to CMYK? Or is there a main setting in InDesign to convert everything to CMYK? And by utilizing a CMYK workflow only, does this convert all spot colors to process colors? If so, I really can't make that change.

Reply: It does mean CMYK only and I agree with you. I can't make that change either. just pointing it out.

jonkovatch Wrote:

Kevin Stallibrass Wrote:For my own work, using the generic workflow above, I happily use both RGB and CMYK within PDF then if I see an issue, save it instead as EPS level3. That normally sorts it.

Just to clarify, you export out of InDesign/Illustrator as an EPS file, instead of a PDF? Do you have any other issues that arise due to this? Why don't you just export everything as EPS?

Reply: If I had my way, I'd never open a file in the design program. Just Onyx. If an image comes in as PDF I can usually spot problems either in preview or preflight.
That's the whole idea of my settings - first time result without doing any other work
When I save out of a program it's usually eps though you have to watch for fonts etc. This is less of a problem nowadays as so many designers convert everything to outlines.

Final note. If the customer is a photographer, then many times it calls for an Adobe98 workflow. I tend to deal mostly with signage people so photographers are easy to spot...

Kevin

NOTE from Scott: I updated the formatting a little to help clean it up as there is a lot of conversation going on.

[Henry]

Hello gentleman!

If it's any help.

For my workflow i always include:

Cmyk: Europe ISO coated Fogra27
Rgb: Adobe 1998
Use embedded profiles enabled, this is because most of our customers use the same
workflow/workspace.

As suggested by Max Derhak (Onyx) i save my files as Pdf 1.7 and installed the latest RIP patch
Sofar i don't have any problems anymore with the shadow/box isseu! ( i hope it stays this way)

This is in short my workflow, for me this is working fine.

Regards!!,

Henry

[virtu]

Hi,

Additional Note:
If you got for example 2 objects in your PDF file, 1 object is tagged with swopv2, the other is tagged with for example coatedfogra39.

Lets say object 1 is a CMYK combination 22/17/18/0 tagged with swopv2.... That color looks neutral grey.

2. object might have a CMYK of 27/20/19/0 ... that is grey in coatedfogra39 ...

Lets say you now choose swop v2 as your input profile in onyx... when you print the file:
object 1 looks grey, object 2 might be too green.

Also if you got 2 tagged for exmaple 100/100 reds. 100/100 in swopv2 is not the same as 100/100 in some newspaper. The PDF has 2 100/100 reds that shouldnt look the same, but you choose 1 input profile for the PDF and you print 2 identical reds.

If you convert the PDF to ABCD.icc then you should use ABCD.icc as your input profile.

Best thing to avoid problems use ABCD.icc in all your Adobe Programs as "Your colorspace"

virtu

[jonkovach]

I must say, great conversation here.

Kevin - I am along quite the same lines as you. And you struck the right chord with me when you said, "This is a system merely to get most work saleable first time from a wide range of files." That is where I am at, as well. Every once in a while, I see images that obviously don't look right.

I do choose to honor embedded profiles, because I do work with some design firms, and they do want their profiles to print. So I choose to stick with them. I don't think I'd get any better, or more saleable, results by throwing everything away and using mine only.

Thanks for all the comments - this was exactly what I was looking for.
Jon