color manglement question

howldog wrote:

I know, I know, Windoze XP, "it cant be done without third party software".

however.

i’m using Illustrator 9, Photoshop 7, and InDesign 2 in windows XP.
I can assign all them the same profile, so the graphics appear similar onscreen. Printing to my inhouse color inkjet, an HP Design Jet 1- PS, is another matter. The profiles supplied by them, dont seem to be too color accurate. the printer has its own color manglement system, to confuse matters.

Really tho, the picture is further confusing by attempting to predict what i’m going to get from an imagesetter across town. They wont supply me with a profile. I could just go with the default US Prepress, but then the inkjet doesnt exactly match onscreen, and who knows what i’ll get across town.

any advice?

The printer not having profiles is fairly typical.
Send them an untagged CMYK file with accompanying printouts from your inkjet.
Post your article to comp.publish.prepress for answers from folks with direct experience.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:53:04 -0400, howldog wrote:

I know, I know, Windoze XP, "it cant be done without third party software".

however.

i’m using Illustrator 9, Photoshop 7, and InDesign 2 in windows XP.
I can assign all them the same profile, so the graphics appear similar onscreen. Printing to my inhouse color inkjet, an HP Design Jet 1- PS, is another matter. The profiles supplied by them, dont seem to be too color accurate. the printer has its own color manglement system, to confuse matters.

Really tho, the picture is further confusing by attempting to predict what i’m going to get from an imagesetter across town. They wont supply me with a profile. I could just go with the default US Prepress, but then the inkjet doesnt exactly match onscreen, and who knows what i’ll get across town.

any advice?

Get the profile right using Prepress. Check it as a spot proof. Save it. Then go through setting it up for the inkjet, soft proof to make sure that’s correct and print it. Yes, I know that means two images for printing, but it’s the only way. And when you’ve done that get yourself a proper printer who *will* give you the profile. 😉

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

in article , howldog at
wrote on 6/21/04 1:53 PM:

I know, I know, Windoze XP, "it cant be done without third party software".

however.

i’m using Illustrator 9, Photoshop 7, and InDesign 2 in windows XP.
I can assign all them the same profile, so the graphics appear similar onscreen. Printing to my inhouse color inkjet, an HP Design Jet 1- PS, is another matter. The profiles supplied by them, dont seem to be too color accurate. the printer has its own color manglement system, to confuse matters.

Really tho, the picture is further confusing by attempting to predict what i’m going to get from an imagesetter across town. They wont supply me with a profile. I could just go with the default US Prepress, but then the inkjet doesnt exactly match onscreen, and who knows what i’ll get across town.

any advice?

_

A major problem is having profiles applied twice.
Hopefully you are not doing that when sending to your own laser. –
When sending out to a CMYK color management unsavvy printer: I think your best result would be for you to:
take your final RGB file
convert to profile – US Sheetfed coated V2 (NOT the SWOP version) finish color correcting –
then either strip the profile from the file (or not)
but advise your printer to leave the file untouched.

You may be safe by supplying a "final" eps file instead of a tiff.

MSD
–
You can manage color in Windoze.

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 02:32:12 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:53:04 -0400, howldog wrote:

I know, I know, Windoze XP, "it cant be done without third party software".

however.

i’m using Illustrator 9, Photoshop 7, and InDesign 2 in windows XP.
I can assign all them the same profile, so the graphics appear similar onscreen. Printing to my inhouse color inkjet, an HP Design Jet 1- PS, is another matter. The profiles supplied by them, dont seem to be too color accurate. the printer has its own color manglement system, to confuse matters.

Really tho, the picture is further confusing by attempting to predict what i’m going to get from an imagesetter across town. They wont supply me with a profile. I could just go with the default US Prepress, but then the inkjet doesnt exactly match onscreen, and who knows what i’ll get across town.

any advice?

Get the profile right using Prepress. Check it as a spot proof. Save it.

uh, how do i know its "right"? Check it against what? A printed copy of the press? Pardon my confusion.

Then go through setting it up for the inkjet, soft proof to make

sure that’s correct and print it. Yes, I know that means two images for printing, but it’s the only way.

i’ve thought of that…. one image goes to inkjet, another to Press. that sort of sucks, but…. might be the only way?

And when you’ve done that get

yourself a proper printer who *will* give you the profile. 😉
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:54:40 GMT, WharfRat
wrote:

_

A major problem is having profiles applied twice.
Hopefully you are not doing that when sending to your own laser.

that IS a problem. The inkjet, an HP DesignJet 10 PS, has its own color managlement software. Unfortunately, that makes two different color systems working. If i turn off the printers color managlement, it looks REALLY bad.

So, i’m wondering if i should jus tturn off color management in all my Adobe apps and let the inkjet do it.

But, that will make trying to match an imagesetter down the street, even harder.

–
When sending out to a CMYK color management unsavvy printer: I think your best result would be for you to:
take your final RGB file
convert to profile – US Sheetfed coated V2 (NOT the SWOP version)

why not SWOP?

Have you determined that US Sheetfed coated v2 is very to close to your printers imagesetter and press?

finish color correcting –
then either strip the profile from the file (or not)
but advise your printer to leave the file untouched.

yeah, i usually do that. "convert the colors" but dont save with any tag at all.

You may be safe by supplying a "final" eps file instead of a tiff.
MSD
–
You can manage color in Windoze.

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:47:50 -0400, howldog wrote:

Get the profile right using Prepress. Check it as a spot proof. Save it.

uh, how do i know its "right"? Check it against what? A printed copy of the press? Pardon my confusion.

Sorry, <g> Soft proof not spot proof.

Then go through setting it up for the inkjet, soft proof to make

sure that’s correct and print it. Yes, I know that means two images for printing, but it’s the only way.

i’ve thought of that…. one image goes to inkjet, another to Press. that sort of sucks, but…. might be the only way?

Looks like it to me, but other people here with more prepress experience may have better ideas 🙂

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

in article , howldog at
wrote on 6/22/04 10:51 AM:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 01:54:40 GMT, WharfRat
wrote:

_

A major problem is having profiles applied twice.
Hopefully you are not doing that when sending to your own laser.

that IS a problem. The inkjet, an HP DesignJet 10 PS, has its own color managlement software. Unfortunately, that makes two different color systems working. If i turn off the printers color managlement, it looks REALLY bad.

So, i’m wondering if i should jus tturn off color management in all my Adobe apps and let the inkjet do it.

–
I would go with No Printer Color Management.
If the color is off – your printer profile is not correct or you are not getting the file from the capture device to the printer properly.
–

But, that will make trying to match an imagesetter down the street, even harder.

–
When sending out to a CMYK color management unsavvy printer: I think your best result would be for you to:
take your final RGB file
convert to profile – US Sheetfed coated V2 (NOT the SWOP version)

why not SWOP?

Have you determined that US Sheetfed coated v2 is very to close to your printers imagesetter and press?

–
Generally yes – not always. I think it is a better bet by a large average. –

finish color correcting –
then either strip the profile from the file (or not)
but advise your printer to leave the file untouched.

yeah, i usually do that. "convert the colors" but dont save with any tag at all.

–
Once the file is color corrected and the tag removed –
it is only suitable for one output device.
Then make sure no color handling is happening anywhere.
Do you convert to your printer profile from Abobe RGB, your scanner space – or what?
How do you go about using your page layout application with those images? –

You may be safe by supplying a "final" eps file instead of a tiff.
MSD
–
You can manage color in Windoze.

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:53:04 -0400, howldog wrote:

I know, I know, Windoze XP, "it cant be done without third party software".

however.

i’m using Illustrator 9, Photoshop 7, and InDesign 2 in windows XP.
I can assign all them the same profile, so the graphics appear similar onscreen. Printing to my inhouse color inkjet, an HP Design Jet 1- PS, is another matter. The profiles supplied by them, dont seem to be too color accurate. the printer has its own color manglement system, to confuse matters.

Really tho, the picture is further confusing by attempting to predict what i’m going to get from an imagesetter across town. They wont supply me with a profile. I could just go with the default US Prepress, but then the inkjet doesnt exactly match onscreen, and who knows what i’ll get across town.

any advice?

Get the profile right using Prepress. Check it as a spot proof. Save it. Then go through setting it up for the inkjet, soft proof to make sure that’s correct and print it. Yes, I know that means two images for printing, but it’s the only way. And when you’ve done that get yourself a proper printer who *will* give you the profile. 😉

No profile from printer = no job to printer.

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:45:24 GMT, WharfRat
wrote:

_

A major problem is having profiles applied twice.
Hopefully you are not doing that when sending to your own laser.

that IS a problem. The inkjet, an HP DesignJet 10 PS, has its own color managlement software. Unfortunately, that makes two different color systems working. If i turn off the printers color managlement, it looks REALLY bad.

So, i’m wondering if i should jus tturn off color management in all my Adobe apps and let the inkjet do it.

–
I would go with No Printer Color Management.

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

I’ve screwed around with different settings long enough on this. Its an HP DesignJet printer and I’ve come to the conclusion that its just not an overly wonderful or co-operative RIP. It is, what it is, its good enough for my client, and we dont print a lot of tricky color stuff, like fleshtones, they arent that exacting. As long as i’m fairly close with the inkjets, i’ll get a random from the printer and go from there.

So for that reason, until i get my test matchprint back from the imagesetter, i’ve assigned al my adobe programs to color management off and i’m using the printers color management. At least the inkjet prints look more or less like what they are supposed to.

I even called HP tech support and the techie on the phone, gave me a set of instructions exactly OPPOSITE of what it says to do in their enormous color management instructional brochure for the printer. Weird as hell.

yeah, i usually do that. "convert the colors" but dont save with any tag at all.

–
Once the file is color corrected and the tag removed –
it is only suitable for one output device.

true, i realize if i had time, the best way to go would be assign default CMYK profile to be one supplied by printer, or use one they say is close, and save that file. then before i printed on inkjet, soft proof via profile that i have determined is a good match for inkjet (usually one NOT provided by inkjet company,m those are sometimes horrible) and color correct that, then save that to another name. One file for inkjet, one file for imagesetter. Alas, i dont have time or energy.

Then make sure no color handling is happening anywhere.
Do you convert to your printer profile from Abobe RGB, your scanner space – or what?

adobe gamma generated monitor profile. I’ve been told in Windows, real color management, including monitor profiling, is impossible without 3rd party calibrators.

How do you go about using your page layout application with those images?

no color management turned on in either Quark or InDesign. Altho with Indy, doesnt seem to affect prints so much.

thanks for the help. this is really confusing sometimes.

a good case for Mac’s color sync.

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:16:07 -0400, howldog wrote:

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

Ah, well,there’s your fist problem. You’re sending a CMYK file to an inkjet which expects an RGB file. SO it converts you CMYK file to CMYK and you colours are horrible.
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 01:38:22 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:16:07 -0400, howldog wrote:

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

Ah, well,there’s your fist problem. You’re sending a CMYK file to an inkjet which expects an RGB file. SO it converts you CMYK file to CMYK and you colours are horrible.
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

I agree, leave your file as RGB. when you send it to a CMYK printer it will convert it to CMYK. When you convert it to CMYK you are generating a black plate which could be different to the way the printer wants it so it with re-generate a CMYK from your CMYK file, which will not look the best.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:48:31 +1000, Glo8al
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 01:38:22 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:16:07 -0400, howldog wrote:

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

Ah, well,there’s your fist problem. You’re sending a CMYK file to an inkjet which expects an RGB file. SO it converts you CMYK file to CMYK and you colours are horrible.
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

I agree, leave your file as RGB. when you send it to a CMYK printer it will convert it to CMYK. When you convert it to CMYK you are generating a black plate which could be different to the way the printer wants it so it with re-generate a CMYK from your CMYK file, which will not look the best.

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:19:34 -0400, howldog wrote:

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

Is your inkjet a postscript printer?

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 00:49:40 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:19:34 -0400, howldog wrote:

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

Is your inkjet a postscript printer?

yeah it is. it says Postscript but i dont know if its maybe Postscript emulation; a design forum i subascribe to has an ongoing discussion right now about true Adobe postscript versus emulation and how different they are

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 10:30:04 -0400, howldog wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 00:49:40 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:19:34 -0400, howldog wrote:

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

Is your inkjet a postscript printer?

yeah it is. it says Postscript but i dont know if its maybe Postscript emulation; a design forum i subascribe to has an ongoing discussion right now about true Adobe postscript versus emulation and how different they are

I suspect that’s one of your problems.. Personally, I have yet to see an inkjet that can do postscript properly. And I don’t know, either, of an inkjet that expects CMYK input rather than RGB.

(Doesn’t mean there isn’t one – I just don’t know about it <g>).

—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:19:34 -0400, howldog wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:48:31 +1000, Glo8al
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 01:38:22 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:16:07 -0400, howldog wrote:

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

Ah, well,there’s your fist problem. You’re sending a CMYK file to an inkjet which expects an RGB file. SO it converts you CMYK file to CMYK and you colours are horrible.
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

I agree, leave your file as RGB. when you send it to a CMYK printer it will convert it to CMYK. When you convert it to CMYK you are generating a black plate which could be different to the way the printer wants it so it with re-generate a CMYK from your CMYK file, which will not look the best.

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

I don’t know about your RIP, but every one of our output devices always print better with RGB either using Adobe RGB or similar profile, sRGB clips to much of the colour information.
Our rip allows us to pick the input profile of both RGB or CMYK and vector or bitmap.
I have seen some printers that if you only send RGB information and the printer won’t use the black ink, therefore it tries to generate blacks, grays using only the CMY which looks like crap.
I think that a printer with good colour management software should be able to convert a RGB into a good CMYK.
If it can’t do this then you will have to send CMYK.
If you can create a profile of your printer, you could then use this to convert your RGB file to the printers CMYK, that way it wont do a "double convert" CMYK to printers CMYK.
This will look better.

in article , howldog at
wrote on 6/24/04 10:19 AM:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 22:48:31 +1000, Glo8al
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 01:38:22 +0100, Hecate wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 11:16:07 -0400, howldog wrote:

i cant explain this, but, prints look absymal without the printers color manglement turned on. In fact, nothing i do in photoshop, seems to matter one way or the other. Its quite odd. I opened an RGB jpg from a stock photo disc, converted to CMYK (used default Prepress settings, and later, did it again using Sheetfed). Then assigned three different profiles to it, and saved as three different TIF files. Exported to Quark and InDesign, color management turned off both of those, and printed. In all cases it was the same…. color management turned on in the printer, each TIF printed exactly the same, regardless of different profile. And acceptable color, altho I know if i sent this same file to my printers imagesetter, yeah, the three tifs would look slightly different because of the different profiles assigned.

Color management in the printer turned off, curiously, the TIF photos still looked identical…. altho printed color was horrendous.

Ah, well,there’s your fist problem. You’re sending a CMYK file to an inkjet which expects an RGB file. SO it converts you CMYK file to CMYK and you colours are horrible.
—

Hecate

veni, vidi, reliqui

I agree, leave your file as RGB. when you send it to a CMYK printer it will convert it to CMYK. When you convert it to CMYK you are generating a black plate which could be different to the way the printer wants it so it with re-generate a CMYK from your CMYK file, which will not look the best.

even with a postscript RIP? the manual for this thing says to ALWAYS convert to CMYK before sending to the RIP.

not arguing, just curious

honestly, most prints from inkjets that i have seen, are usualy more saturated than what an offset press tends to get.

—
You need to clarify if – in each instance – you are referring to a printer (inkjet – lazer) or a printer (lithographer)
If you and your print shop are running a fully color managed workflow, you can send them RGB to be converted in the RIP.
If they use no color management in your workflow,
then send them CMYK files.
Ask, at least, what output profile they use in PhotoShop, if they have no press profiles.
Or get their matchprint profile.
If they have no knowledge of any of thet –
get your file correct in the "US Sheetfed Coated V2" space and tell them to leave it alone.
–
If you are sending to an inkjet – send RGB data,
converted from the working space to the printer profile. –
If you want the closest match you can get
from your inkjet to their CMYK press …
take your CMYK final file
and then convert to profile to the profile of your inkjet. The smaller color space of the CMYK data
will yield no effect when going into the printer profile – and your inkjet will print out press compatable color.
More or less.

MSD