Color Settings and Adobe PDF Presets in Illustrator

Question

Hi! I wonder if someone could help me understand the Color Settings and Adobe PDF Presets in Illustrator.
I want to sell digital downloads of my art work that my clients can print at home or at a local print shop.
All my art work is in vector, created in Illustrator and I mostly use CMYK colors. I want to offer PDFs and PNGs in high resolution to be printed in big sizes (if the clients wants to).

I´m based in Sweden and I have always used Adobe RGB (1998) and Coated FOGRA39 in my Color Settings, but doing my research I realize that most of my clients will be in the US, where Coated GRACol 2006 or U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 seems to be the norm.
I´m also thinking of using some of my designs for Print On Demand, and it seems they want Coated GRACol 2006 as well, and also PDF/X-4:2010.

See images below for my current settings.

Should I change FOGRA39 to Coated GRACol 2006 in my Color Settings?

And what changes do I need to make when I save my art work to PDF, regarding PDF Standard, Compability, Color Conversion, Destination and Profile Inclusion Policy?

To be honest, I don´t really understand the different options here. I have always used the Press Quality preset and never really thought about the rest. But now I want to understand the different options 🙂

Thanks in advance!

Ton Frederiks · Answer

You mentioned that your clients can print at home or at a local print shop.

If I understand correctly, these will not be volume print jobs, but single prints.

If so, there is probably no traditional printing press involved and there is no need for CMYK.

Home printers and print shops use printers that can have more inks than a traditional 4 color press.

They will use RGB to convert your artwork into the number of inks available.

Most of the home printers use sRGB by default, but some can use the larger gamut of Adobe RGB.

I would give them a choice, work in Adobe RGB and save a separate version as sRGB (set you Color Settings to sRGB and you will have an option to convert AdobeRGB to sRGB when opening the AdobeRGB file).

When saving as PDF, I would use a variation of the High Quality Print Preset with the Output > Profile Inclusion Policy : Include All Profiles

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