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• • April 21, 2016 at 4:41 pm #84187
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi all,

    Having a bit of an issue here. I’ve spent the better part of a day on the phone with the printer regarding photo artwork showing up really dark on their end when printed. Everything looks fine on screen in the PDF I sent them. They said the photographer who submitted artwork to me for this brochure was using a custom ICC profile in order to enhance the appearance of his images (I have never done this with my own photography but apparently it’s becoming “a thing” for some people). Upon closer inspection I can’t identify a custom profile but I noticed he used Adobe RGB as the color space for everything, whereas I’m accustomed to receiving photos in sRGB.

    The printer’s artwork spec is PDF/X-1a submitted in CMYK (they told me SWOP v2 is fine so I use that when exporting). Their printer is a Xerox iGen digital press. I always thought I had a decent understanding of color management—at least enough to be effective, but I have tried the following to get the images to look correct, with no success:

    1) use the Convert to Profile feature in InDesign to convert all RGB images to sRGB xxxxxx-2.1 with Perceptual intent, then export with the above PDF specs
    2) created a batch action in Photoshop to convert all images to sRGB with Perceptual intent using Photoshop then re-save, updated links in InDesign and re-export PDF

    I suppose I have two questions here: 1) why do all the images still look fine on screen but not in print (even in the PDF) and 2) what am I missing here that is causing either the custom profile or messed up color to follow the PDF through to the conversion, especially when using the PDF/X-1a standard which does not allow the inclusion of ICC profiles?

  • April 21, 2016 at 5:02 pm #84191
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Actually Edit > Convert to Profile does NOT change any image data. That just changes data inside the InDesign document (such as Swatches).

    In general, though, if you place one sRGB image one Adobe RGB image, and then export to a PDF/X-1a, they’ll both be converted to CMYK properly. Nothing wrong with the photographer using Adobe RGB.

    I would suggest changing the Destination Profile (in the export pdf dialog box) from SWOP to Gracol or Fogra39 (or fogra29 if it’s uncoated). That’ll likely be a better CMYK conversion.

    I explain InDesign’s color management (including working with photoshop and illustrator) in detail in my Lynda.com title here.

  • April 21, 2016 at 5:05 pm #84192
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Amazing, David. Thank you so much. I love Lynda.com and have learned so much from your courses! I’ll definitely check it out.

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