E. wrote:
My printer tells me that my “CMS” is on and I need to shut it off. What is it and where is it?
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s a reasonable chance your printer is a bonehead. It’s possible that they have a point (I’m willing to keep an open mind), but unlikely.
A “CMS” can mean either a “content management system” or a “color management system.” The former is primarily used for assets or database-driven publishing (such as our very own WordPress blog here). The latter is used for getting more consistent color from original to screen to proof to output. I’m guessing that he or she means the latter.
First of all, I need to make one thing really clear here: There is no way to turn off the color management system. In any program. Period. If you import a CMYK image into InDesign (or Word, for that matter), it needs to display it on screen. Your screen is an RGB device. Therefore, it must “manage” the color to convert it to RGB. If you import an RGB image and try to print it, it needs to be converted to CMYK somewhere along the line. That’s color management.
So there is no way to turn it off. There are only ways to do it smart or stupid. “Stupid” means having your software do it blindly, without you having any input into “which RGB” and “which CMYK” and how do you want to deal with out-of-gamut colors (colors that cannot be represented in the color space you’re converting to).
“Smart” means that your software lets you provide input, and you pay attention and give it some guidance.
Turning CMS “off” (which, in InDesign’s case, probably means opening Edit > Color Settings, and choosing “Emulate InDesign 2.0 CMS Off” from the Settings pop-up menu) means “I’m a bonehead ostrich and if I stick my head in this hole and believe hard enough that color management doesn’t exist, then maybe it’ll just go away.”
There is no escaping color management. It will happen with or without you. If you want good color, you’ll learn a little bit about color management and how to make little tweaks that can give you big results. If you don’t care about color quality, and you don’t mind being roadkill, then “Off” may be a good choice for you.
That said — now that I’ve gotten that off my chest — there is one other possible explanation for “off”: They want you to use Preserve Numbers. I’ve written about that feature in a couple of places, such as making good proofs, and in this comment. I guess Preserve Numbers is kind of like “turn it off” for CMYK images. For example, if you import a CMYK image or you have 100% black text, and you don’t want it to get converted to some other CMYK or four-color-black text… It’s a very reasonable feature and it’s what most people should be using when printing or exporting PDFs from InDesign.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on November 26, 2008
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