Thank you very much for all suggestions. Incremental rotation is correct I will look into it more when time allows. ... View more

Sorry, here is image explaining what I mean. I would like all the squares vertically aligned. ... View more

Not sure if someone has suggested the following: 1. Assign a Maximum GCR CMYK profile to the InDesign document. It is fairly easy to create one of these profiles in Photoshop. 2. Change the Transparency Blend Space to RGB. 3. Draw a paper filled box over the entire page. Change the blend mode to Color. I like to put this box on a top layer that I can hide to restore color to the document. 4. Output PDF/X-1a. You will probably see a warning about the blend space, but continue on with the export. Resulting PDF is CMYK with empty CMY plates. Be advised this procedure should be used when all you want is a quick PDF with everything on the black plate, quality not being a major issue. It may be helpful if you want to avoid Post Script, Distiller, or an extra step in Acrobat Pro. ... View more

There is a trick I use in Photoshop sometimes. Click on the Color Picker in the Tools. In Color Libraries, go to Solid Coated 285. Then change the Library to Solid Uncoated. The result is PMS 300 U. It is not a great match by any means, but it is probably the closest match Solid Uncoated has to offer. Uncoated paper has a tremendous effect on ink appearance, that is why the 285U is so washed out compared to 285C. Every Pantone color has a Lab definition, which you can see in the Photoshop libraries. What Photoshop is doing is seeing what color in the Uncoated library has the closest Lab equivalent to 285C. 285C is L46, a-4, b-58. 300 U is L43, a-8, b-49. The L values is fairly close, but the other values present problems. A in Lab moves from green(-) to magenta (+), with 0 being neutral (neither green nor magenta). Because a in 300U is -8, and in 285C the a is -4, 300U is moving just a little more towards green (not a lot, but a little) The b value is a bigger problem. B in Lab goes from blue(-) to yellow(+), with 0 being neutral. The b value in 285C is -58, while the b in 300U is -49. This means that 300U is significantly "grayer" (less colorful) than 285C. But again, 300U may be your best bet on uncoated paper. Your other option is to look through an Pantone Uncoated swatch book and choose a color that you think is best for your purposes. Hope this helps. ... View more

Reading back, I see where the methods posted earlier create a warning layer (starting with post 19). So if you wanted to flag 260 TIL, 260 / 400 = .65. Set the curve points at 64 and 66, problem areas are indicated. My method was simply hiding all but the heaviest coverage areas, then read the info of what you see. Both methods work well. The warning method is more like what is available in InDesign and Acrobat. ... View more

You are right, there is a flaw in the method I posted for seeing the total ink. First off, step 2 (select inverse) needs to be thrown out, not sure what I was thinking. In step 1, loading CMYK channel as a selection, is based on luminosity. The problem is you could potentially have an area, 100K only, and another area 100C 75M 100Y 0K. So it's 100% ink versus 275% ink. But from a luminance standpoint the 100K is darker, so prepress would not be aware of the dark hunter green. They would think 100% ink was the maximum coverage. I made an action that remedies the problem. Before the CMYK channel selection, add a Channel Mixer layer. 25% across the board, all 4 colors. This puts all the inks on an equal playing field. After that, make the CMYK channel selection, then hide the channel mixer layer and proceed with the white fill layer. Remember, the threshold is applied to the white fill mask. Deselect the mask at the end. Everything is white except the areas with the most ink. To summarize: 1. Channel Mixer adjustment layer, 25% all colors for all channels. 2. Load CMYK channel as selection. 3. Hide channel mixer layer. 4. White fill layer. 5. Select mask, Adjustment: Threshold. Slide to 1. then go to the right until you see image. 6. Deselect mask and read the info of the non white areas. ... View more

This is a method for evaluating total ink that may work for some: 1. Load CMYK channel as selection 2. Invert selection 3. Layer: New Fill Layer: Solid Color, make it white 4. Select mask. Image: Adjustments: Threshold. Slider all the way to the left (1). If you see some image, go to next step. If you don't see image, slide to the right until you do. 6. Deselect the mask and read the total ink info. Also note: repeatedly hiding and showing the black channel can be helpful in quickly identifying problem areas. When you do this, areas with excessive ink coverage stand out. Russell this is a variation of your method for TIL reduction: 1. Image: Duplicate 2. Convert to Profile, with flatten, select CMYK profile with appropriate TIL. 3. Layer: Duplicate to original document. Close dupe file, no need to save 4. Move new layer to top and hide 5. Load K channel as selection, invert selection 6. Show top most layer. Layer: Layer mask: reveal selection. 7. Set blend mode of layer to Luminosity. Results vary depending on the image. Color areas can be affected. If so the mask can be subdued with a curve. Another option: you could try loading CMYK channel as the selection in step 5, instead of the K channel. This will affect much more of the image, but you also have more mask area to work with if you need to adjust the mask with a curve. Mark's concern about the profile losing meaning is warranted. So keep the adjustment non-destructive (a top most layer). And make sure the image is an end file. You've altered the black point and a conversion wouldn't be ideal. And Ptaz makes a good point in post 9 about overlap. If the image is overly critical an ink cutback layer might not be the best route. As you know the best thing is for images to remain source color and be converted to CMYK at output, which is most always past the Photoshop stage (InDesign). I get files with too much ink coverage too. Many times Photoshop isn't even to blame. It is easy for someone to Multiply on top of images in InDesign and create 400% ink coverage. ... View more

I would not throw in an extra conversion to CMYK and go back to RGB. A few points to consider: 1. There are many different CMYK color spaces. Some are much larger than others. The gamut warning hinges on your Proof Setup CMYK space – if you are in U.S., this would default to US Web Coated SWOP v2. Just be certain that the CMYK is appropriate for your project (check with your printer). 2. Use Proof Setup. Then you can view the conversion and preserve the source RGB. 3. If possible avoid converting the image in Photoshop. Most document layout programs (such as InDesign) support color management of source RGB images. By preserving source color you can use the same image and repurpose it for a variety of outputs. 4. The color truncation as you move from source RGB to CMYK is quite normal, and it is also normal to see a lot of gray with Gamut Warning. The key is to modify the source image so that the damage moving to CMYK is acceptable. Do not try to eliminate all the grays you see in Gamut Warning. Just make certain that the spirit of the source color is somewhat preserved. Use adjustment layers which are non-destructive. For example, you may see blues shifting to purple. In such case you could add a hue shift layer to move it towards cyan. 5. Many times extremely saturated RGB areas will lose detail on conversion. In such cases the desaturation you mentioned may be warranted, but use an adjustment layer. 6. I recommend Adobe RGB as a source space for print. It is a very large color space. It was designed to contain almost all printable colors. Unfortunately, in order for it to contain almost every conceivable print color, it has fringe colors that extend way beyond print. If your image has these fringe colors, don't try to force them all into your destination CMYK while you are still in RGB. It is normal for the image to take a hit when the move happens, your goal should be making the damage something you can live with. ... View more

jethrodesign wrote: - And for the sake of understanding, if we're usually printing on uncoated stock but WITH a U/V coating, would coated PMS values be closer than uncoated in this scenario? Uncoated is closer. The UV follows the printing. Are you sure that it's uncoated with UV? It will be a duller color appearance with a shiny coating on top. jethrodesign wrote: I wish our conversions were a bit more consistent like the example Lou was stating (only 2 primaries being used, with only one really shifting). But in our case, we are seeing 2 or 3 of the primaries changing, sometimes pretty radically. So it makes it a bit tougher to 'average out' I guess. But IN THEORY, would this be the order of preference for conversion? 1) Use the LAB conversion with accurate press profiles provided 2) Use Pantone Bridge PC conversion 3) Use the older Pantone CMYK conversion (default in InDesign and Illustrator) There is no winner. Bear in mind, with option one you can create alternate CMYKs with different black generations. In InDesign, you could choose to use a different rendering for solid colors too. Be very careful, though. There are jobs where InDesign swatches need to match Photoshop colors. In such case different renderings could cause a problem. With option 2, for uncoated, Bridge has a separate library. The coated, matte, and uncoated designations for the solids can get EXTREMELY confusing. Consider for a moment that you’re actually printing the Pantone, not CMYK. A corporation specifies 292. It’s a very specific can of ink. But the ink has no Lab designation. It has to have the paper to get that. So is the statement “our corporate color is PMS 292” really good enough? If the company means 292 C – what if the job goes on uncoated? The better solid uncoated match is 2915 U. Now throw CMYK into the mix. Do you map 292 C Lab to the uncoated ICC? Or 292 U? Or 2915 U? If there’s no way of knowing for sure, I personally would default to the C library and map that to the destination (because if you had to guess, the other person is looking at the C book, the most popular one). As for Bridge, I would generally avoid using Bridge coated numbers for uncoated jobs, because Pantone specifically designed different Bridge builds for coated and uncoated. That was not the case with Solid to Process, where the same build values were printed in the coated and uncoated books. Again I should reiterate, no winner when it comes to builds. The modern solution is Lab – CMYK. But there is a chance, somewhere down the line, some crotchety old dude is looking at a 10 year old solid to process book, and wondering why different numbers were used on his print job. ... View more

The Pantone Lab values are fixed and should account for the paper white. 293 C is L29 a7 b-66. If I have a Pantone coated swatch book (not out of date), and read the color with a spectro it should be within 2 DeltaE (CMC) of the book Lab numbers. The problem with processing a CMYK color back into Lab is having to use Absolute rendering to account for paper white. To better explain, assume you are reasonably sure of the destination CMYK. But there's no way you will be able to read the press sheet with a spectro to get the printed Lab value. You could take the CMYK build, map it to Lab using Absolute. The numbers should closely match the printed result. ... View more

jethrodesign wrote: (The numbers are very different, for instance our dark blue PMS 539C is either 100C, 49M, 0Y, 70k using the Pantone conversion, or 100C, 77M, 47Y, 51K using LAB conversion. Those are pretty radically different numbers and kind of make me nervous). The first build is Solid to Process. One good feature about Solid to Process, you will notice that almost all of the builds are comprised of only 2 or 3 primaries. Hardly ever 4. The colors are fully saturated, then darkened with black when necessary. (Black also desaturates because CMYK is not a cube like Lab) The Lab conversion technique introduces the yellow gray component to the 539 color. In theory no problem with that, and if the press does its job it should be OK. That is the color management solution. But with this Lab conversion you have four ink variables for the critical color swatch instead of only 3. In any production system, an additional variable is more chance for error. I would use both color management and a Pantone build library. Create a blank CMYK in PS and assign the appropriate profile. For example Lou's suggestion of SWOP2006 grade 3. Go to the color picker. Pick the solid 539 and hit enter. Go back to the picker again. Change to the Solid to Process library. This identifies the closest STP match to the solid Lab in your current CMYK color space. It happens to be 5395 (FWIW) using relative colorimetric. Going to process coated you end up with DS 327-1. This is 35C 0M 0Y 100K. So not a great result using that library. There are other solutions you could try too. Some people use Saturation intent for solid colors, which may yield a more pleasing result. Others create a specialized max GCR version of the CMYK space and convert the Lab to that, ensuring that black is used as the gray component. Bridge may be OK to use too. It is the new Pantone build system after all. However like the Lab conversions, many Bridge builds use 4 colors. Another problem with Bridge, it is not the Adobe default, so it's not widely used. Something else too when using Lab source for solids. If the job is on a dull coated sheet you want to use Matte. The Solid Coated is for a gloss sheet. There is not a huge difference as with uncoated, but there is a difference nonetheless. ... View more

Peter is right. Color conversions are extremely complex. What's more, Lab is always in between. When you go RGB > CMYK, it's really RGB > Lab > CMYK. RGB numbers alone do not make colors. CMYK numbers alone do not make colors. It is only when the numbers are associated with a precise color space that they take on a color definition. This definition is achieved by means of a translation into the Lab color space, which is device independent. If you need specific colors, the focus is generally on appearance. If you adhere to good color management policies then device numbers (RGB, CMYK) don't matter so much. ... View more

The 2nd icon (subtract) would be an inverse of the first (add). Normally to create a compound path (like a donut), you can select the entire path, then the 4th icon (exclude) so that the inner sub paths are knocked out of the outside path. ... View more

Window: Options. Then select the Path Selection tool (solid black arrow) You should see 4 path options near the left. If you have sub paths, sometimes combinations of the options produces the correct result. Something else to consider: you can choose to use shape layers instead of paths. But to get vector output using shape layers, you have to save the image as a PDF. The advantage with shape layers is that you can see the clipped result in Photoshop, and everything outside the path is transparent. ... View more

Select the path with the path selection tool (solid arrow). Then click on the Add icon (1st of 4) in the options bar at the top. Let me know if that doesn't work. ... View more

Is there no way to click on any area of a page, and have the color readout transfer into the color picker? Or the color panel? Or the swatches panel? The eyedropper being object based does not seem to do this properly. ... View more

But that's referring to the InDesign layers, right? I meant layer options for a placed PDF. Similar to layer control for placed PSD files. If you hide the PDF layer using Object Layer options it won't show up when you export. ... View more

There is an InDesign solution. Place the PDF. With Object Layer options hide the unwanted layer. Export a new PDF. ... View more

JohnAD77 wrote: On this particular occurrence i want to delete the "Figure" layer without affecting any content in PDF I'm a little confused. If you delete the layer you affect the content. In his previous post I believe Peter was referring to Acrobat and if so that's a good solution. If you control or right click on the layer in Acrobat, you have the option of changing the default state to "Off". Save the PDF. Now the layer is hidden and won't print, but since it's not deleted you haven't lost it forever. ... View more

In ID control or right click on the PDF graphic. Pull down to Object Layer options. Hide and show layers as needed. ... View more

Just did a paste vs. place test and exported to PDF (on a mac). Images are same resolution in Acrobat, 300 PPI. Since the placed image was RGB they look identical in the PDF. (Side note for color management nerds – if you paste a grayscale image, the result is the same as assigning Gray Gamma 2.2 profile in Photoshop, then converting to the InDesign document RGB color space. ID has no gray color management and defaults to Gray Gamma 2.2) My big question is, why in the world don't the pasted images show up in the Links panel? I never paste images myself but I come across pasted images all the time. It would be ideal if InDesign showed them as embedded links, instead of letting them float on the page without any identification. I really like the script posted earlier but I wish it saved out the images as TIFF instead of JPEG. ... View more

A pasted image (which does not show up in Links panel) is not a preview, and the resolution of the original image is preserved. However the pasted image is always RGB. Not trying to condone pasting images. It is bad practice – it bloats the file, the source image name is lost, and there is no direct means to edit the image in Photoshop. ... View more

mike.n03 wrote: I've already made sure that all imported images are in CMYK mode (by previusly editing them in Photoshop) This is unnecessary. Leave the images RGB. As mentioned in the previous post you can convert to CMYK when you output a PDF. mike.n03 wrote: I know how to export PDF in CKYK mode (by choosing PDF/X-1a:2003 standerd, right?), but how do you get and save entire indd file in CMYK mode? InDesign is not like Illustrator and Photoshop where you are restricted to one color mode. CMYK and RGB can coexist in the same document. To see CMYK in InDesign, you need to utilize Separations Preview. This is very important. Also in Swatches panel, go to Ink Manager and select "All Spots to Process" This will eliminate any spot plates – if you had any spots, they will be removed from Separations Preview. If you actually need certain colors to remain spot, in Ink Manager, click on the icon to the left of the color name to change it back to spot. To expand on what the previous poster stated: In InDesign go to Edit: Assign Profiles. You will see that the document has both an RGB and a CMYK profile. You can't make it one or the other, it's always both. Note the document profiles can be different from those seen in Edit: Color Settings. The profiles in Color Settings affect untagged documents and new documents. They do not affect pre-existing tagged documents. If you want to see if you have any RGB colors being used in InDesign, in Swatches panel go to "Add Unnamed Colors." Refer to the color icons in the list, any RGB swatches will have the RGB icon. Not the end of the world if you have them, they can be converted to CMYK along with RGB images when you output a PDF. Normally for print design, you want the document transparency blend space to be CMYK (under Edit: Transparency blend space). Hope this helps. ... View more

Initial Sort is Name by default. So the PDFs will display in alpha numeric order according to PDF name. Just by changing the PDF names, you can control the order in which the PDFs are displayed to another user. ... View more

If you start out with JPEG RGB images and you do absolutely nothing to the images then you can place them in InDEsign and convert to CMYK when you output to PDF. If you do anything at all to the images in Photoshop save as TIFF or PSD. JPEGs are pretty limiting when it comes to print. The compression is lossy and the format does not support transparency. ... View more

I should try to clarify some of what I stated yesterday, and I really hope the following information is accurate: After Adobe color management is done (whether with InDesign or Photoshop), you end up with press CMYK color values in the output. The page gets RIPped and the result is a Device CMYK image with number values matching the unripped CMYK output. Before the Epson ink jet device can produce a reliable proof, two things must be established: the native color space of the proofer, and the target color space of the press. Both of these gamuts are initially expressed using Lab values. The Lab values then get converted to CMYK to produce two unique CMYK color spaces. One describes the native proofer CMYK, the other describes press target color in the context of proofer CMYK. The native proofer gamut is HUGE, and the target press gamut is small. Once these two spaces are defined, a ripped Device CMYK image can be submitted to the proofer. The proofer understands this image to be native proofer color, even though the file is already press CMYK numbers. In the context of the proofer, the CMYK numbers must change in order to achieve press target color. The reason is, the native proofer CMYK gamut is a lot larger, having 7 or even 8 inks to work with. It is not at all like a normal offset press CMYK. So the proofer color chain is: Device CMYK (BIG) - Lab (BIG) - Press CMYK in proofer context (SMALL) It is helpful to think of one particular color. For instance 100 C 50 M. This is a nice bright blue. If Device color was printed on the Epson, this blue color would be REALLY intense. So a conversion of color must occur for the blue to get dumbed down and appear as it will on press. The C and M numbers may drop, and yellow (the gray component) will be introduced. You might end up with 89C 45M 10Y. HOWEVER this is for proofing purposes only. These new CMYK numbers are NOT sent to plate or press. It is my belief that the ripped numbers you mentioned being different is a result of a proofer conversion (but please let me know if I am wrong). When the blue color does go to plate, the original ripped 100 C 50 M is submitted. Plate curves are applied. But this process is not ICC, just as any curve adjustment to a CMYK image in Photoshop is not ICC. So from the standpoint of the designer using Adobe color management there is only a need for one ICC color conversion to press CMYK. The proofer and plate details are internal prepress workflows. Hope this helps, I just wanted to eliminate any confusion resulting from my rushed posts yesterday. ... View more