Grays printing darker than previous issues of the newsletter I layout

Question

I have to confess, I have little understand of color management.

My workflow is to create all resident colors in CMYK or Grayscale. The linked images are all in RGB until the document is ready to go to press. Then I convert the images in Photoshop to CMYK and Grayscale and relink them to the document.

I had a crash that reset all my presets. Could this have something to do with it?

Or is my printer doing something different (with dot gain, for example)?

I get an error message upon opening INDD file:
Embedded Profile Mismatch
The document”s embedded colour profile does not match the current RGB working space. The current RGB colorur management policy is to discard profiles that do not match the working space.
Embedded: Adobe RGB (1998)
Working: Apple RGB

Does this have something to do with the problem?

rob day · Accepted Answer

Hi @Stormcloud492 , InDesign does not have a grayscale color space-- grayscale objects are placed on the CMYK black plate and color managed with the assigned CMYK profile when Overprint/Separation preview is on.

In Photoshop the conversion from RGB to Grayscale would depend on your document's assigned RGB profile and the current Color Settings Grayscale Working profile, or the settings you choose if you use Convert to Profile.

More here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/greyscale-jpegs-or-psd-images-are-going-much-darker-when-dropped-in-on-indesign/m-p/11152264

Randy Hagan · Answer

Your fastest way to check would be to not discard the profile and run your output. If you're fortunate enough to get the lighter grays you prefer, you have the answer to your question. If you haven't changed your default CMYK: settings in the Working Space section from US Web Coated (SWOP) V2, and most folks who have no reason to don't, your preferences reset shouldn't be an issue.

Did you have any custom settings for color and/or grayscale reproduction? Are the Profile MIsmatch alerts a recent development? When are you seeing them — when you originally place the art into your InDesign documents? Or when you update them after doing your color conversions? Both?

While anything's possible, I suspect that the crash did not have anything to do with your change of color settings. More likely, you're using different or updated color conversion settings in Photoshop. Did these changes start happening when you updated your Creative Cloud software? You say "go to press." Has your press vendor changed how it processes your jobs?

I'm hoping you may get lucky with the sugestion I started with. If not, the question gets more complex, and we'd need a lot more information to figure out how to get you the grays you're looking for.

Hope this helps,

Randy

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