Fixing CMYK Images Over Your Ink Limit with Photoshop

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Here’s a prepress problem: You have a CMYK image in which the Total Ink Coverage (TIC) is over the press limits for successful print. What does this mean? If you somehow piled up the combination of C100-M100-Y100-K100, that adds up to 400% ink. Even in a very dark image (think: darkest outer space), I doubt you’d ever encounter that. But if you know your image’s destination, you should find out your current TIC to see if it’s satisfactory.

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Claudia McCue is the author of the book Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Cloud, and the presenter for a number of print-related LinkedIn Learning courses, including “Learning Print Production,” “InDesign for the In-House Designer,” and “Acrobat Pro DC Essentials.” After more than 30 years in real-world print production, and 20 years of software training, she’s now retired, but still occasionally writes about printing topics.
  • Sheila Perkey says:

    To fix this problem, I use selective color, choose blacks, then remove CMY in even amounts, and bump up the black….UCR (undercolor removal) with GCR (grey color replacement).

  • Peter Spier says:

    Since when I convert an image to CMYK it’s in the correct profile for the output conditions I would hesitate to do a profile conversion.
    My preferred method is to add a curves adjustment layer and lighten the shadows until they are under the ink limit.

    • david cardillo says:

      Manual adjustments are usually best. Every image is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

      Converting profiles is an easy, quick-and-dirty solution. When you don’t have time to do each one individually, or you’re dealing with someone who maybe isn’t as skilled in their selection masking, it’s the best tool for the job.

      As Claudia says, converting to Lab and then back again to the correct space shouldn’t result in a loss of color data.

      You would not want to convert from a space with a higher ink limit (GRACoL) to one with a lower limit (SWOP, uncoated) and then try to go back up, as that image data has been removed.

  • Shawn Girsberger says:

    This is very helpful, Claudia. For example, IngramSpark/Lightning Source has a 240% TIC spec for all printing, so knowing how to make these adjustments makes “getting it right the first time” easier. But as you also mentioned, if the areas affected are small, a project will go through without incident.

  • Jim Oblak says:

    You can solve excessive TIC in a CMYK image by not using a CMYK image. Use color-managed RGB images and address the output intent further down the workflow, in the page layout application. That’s why the same color profile settings are in InDesign too.

    Instead of manual adjustments to many images in Photoshop, use InDesign to do this all at once. You can output US newsprint (2007) or SWOP from the same InDesign document using the same placed RGB images.

    • david cardillo says:

      this is a very effective workflow when you’re unsure of the destination color space. We primarily work in GRACoL 2013, but we deal with printers in different countries, and often they’re in different flavors of Fogra. Being able to convert to the destination profile on the fly is helpful.

      Where this falls down is with designers who don’t appreciate the limits of the CMYK gamut.

      The single most common issue that comes across my desk with regard to profile conversion is the complaint that the art now looks “flat” compared to the more vibrant, larger gamut RGB. Most of the time they’re not seeing this conversion until after they’ve made color proofs. Yes, you can preview gamut warnings, but you can also preview density warnings, and we’re still trying to get designers to check that.

      This article is about Under Color Removal (UCR), but the other really big issue is GCR, Gray Component Replacement. The standard conversions of RGB to CMYK leave almost no data in all but the darkest ranges of the Black channel. All the grays in the highlights to midtones will have no black at all, made up of only CMY. When these values fluctuate on a press (and they always will) you end up with pink and green “grays” that make your designers very upset.

      There are several ways to do GCR, and for accurate printing they’re necessary. But if your art remains in RGB up until export it is difficult to manage.

      • Jim Oblak says:

        “Where this falls down is with designers who don’t appreciate the limits of the CMYK gamut.”

        That’s why I would prefer articles like this would train those less-experienced designers in softproofing with color management skills, rather than this color conversion triage at the prepress level.

        This article appears to be addressing prepress techs. Imagine the fewer headaches these techs would have if this article was aimed higher upstream, to the designers that need to learn color management.

  • David Blatner says:

    As Jim and David pointed out, this article is not necessary if you keep your images in RGB. Claudia and I wrote about this some time ago here: https://creativepro.com/import-rgb-images-indesign-convert-cmyk-export/
    However, sometimes we’re not so lucky and images have already been converted to CMYK. In those cases, this article is gold!

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