One final note, Ellie - It may be best to reverse my original layer order.
Have the heavy GCR base image/background as the lower layer. Place the isolated UCR hero/foreground main image above the background. Reverse the existing mask if needed. You can make the mask slightly smaller by a few pixels by selecting the mask layer and blurring it and then using threshold to shrink it then blur it again slightly. This will provide a better merge of the new CMYK data into the CMY and most importantly the K plate of the underlying heavy GCR separation. One may also wish to play a bit with curves on the isolated hero/foreground image - making some contrast boosting curves in the CK plates so that the wood/grain gets a little lift (the Chromix profile using perceptual intent does some of this anyway in the initial conversion). >> Also of note, adding "smart noise" to the gradated background in this job of Ellie's may be a good idea as well (she did not mention any banding in the final print, so this may not be an issue). Smart noise is noise that is luminance component only (no hue/saturation component) and that the noise is not introduced into the extreme highlights and shadows. << This is best applied in RGB. If in CMYK, it is best to shift target/select the CMY channels only when adding noise, as K noise is often not required with most lower amounts of GCR - we do not wish black when adding additional noise where no black existed before the noise was added. Hope this makes sense. Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
