Hello Richard On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 05:43 AM, Richard Lewisohn wrote:
I'm rarely happy with the way my images end up once printed. One client converts to CMYK themselves with no regard to settings, another sends my RGB files to their printers and the results often look flat and horrible (I asked to look at the CMYK files. The embedded profile was : Photoshop 5 Default CMYK, working: Euroscale Uncoated v2).
I used to get this all the time when I supplied rgb i think what was happening is that the embedded profile (adobe1998) was being ignored and the file was assumed to be srgb... Try it yourself with an Adobe1998 file assign (don't convert) srgb to it and see how awful it looks.
So should I be learning to do the conversions myself?
IMO YES! CMYK is a bit scary at first but so is digital. There is quite alot of subjective interpretation that can be done when converting to CMYK and I want control of it. Since I started supplying CMYK (about two years ago) I have had very few problems.
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Also, how helpful are printers, who are losing this part of their business to photographers and inhouse repro departments, in supply profiles, advice, etc.?Err it depends...some are very helpful and will even send you a profile to convert to others are dumb as ditch water I had a prepress guy tell me to send CMYK when I said "what sort of sep do you want he said "JPG"....
I can also see it becoming another digital service that clients will want for nothing. How much is normally charged for RGB>CMYK conversion (by both photographers and repro houses)?
This is true I've just built it into my costs, if clients see it as a line item I think some will say "Send me rgb" thinking "this guy wants to charge me for going image/mode/cmyk!!!" as if that was all there is to it.
In the meantime, can anyone recommend other books, or other ways of 'learning' CMYK conversion, as well as answering some of the questions above.YES there is such a book that will set you on the path to becoming a CMYK Jedi knight: "Professional Photoshop" by Dan Margulis. He is an excellent writer and can be very funny , but is very good at dealing with such a complex subject (I'm on my 4th read of the book). He is a wee bit rabid on colour management issues but a font of real world knowledge.
HTH Regards Nick Tresidder
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