>> I am supplying images on CD for a magazine in CMYK. I have been told that it is coated stock & that total ink is 340%. Previously for other magazines, in the absence of better information I have used Euroscale Coated 350% & this has been fine. My question is how can I see which are the darkest points on my image. Do I have to hunt around with the eye dropper & add up the numbers. ? Also, If some areas are totalling 350%, can I just tweak the output slider in Levels to reduce it to 340% ? <<
Paul, even if a profile has 350 as the max ink limit - it does not mean that the final sep will have this figure. Often natural images will have a lesser figure. I personally do not see this as a big issue in this case. Photoshop 5.x has a bug which ignores the TAC from some profiles with RelCol intent and blows out to 380% instead of 330% for this profile - but v6 or higher does not, nor does perceptual in any version. One must remember that ICC profiles can be made by anyone and they may not have the wide testing or knowledge/experience of some other profiles or the even the often scorned but very stable/trusted Photoshop built in tables which are now profiles in later versions (Photoshop 5 default CMYK or built in legacy settings). Set the info palette second values to total ink and read the black areas that have significant coverage, you should not have to worry about a 10% overinking on such a high ink weight anyway - this is more critical for newsprint and other conditions that range from 230-280 tac/tic/til. There are a few different ways to tackle the shadow issue if ink weights are too high, but in this case it should not be needed (selective colour and channel mixer can be used with a few other convoluted steps which I will not go into now). There is a very good archive on the Applied Colour Theory list where I discussed altering ink weights with another user, which I don't have time to find the links for. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/colortheory Some posted archives from the list on this topic can be found here, although not what I was referring to above, it may help with the broader topic: http://www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/ACT%20Total%20Ink%20Coverage* (copy the full url including the *) http://www.ledet.com/margulis/ACT_postings/ACT-NUMBERS.TXT Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
