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kerebus
Participant
May 11, 2018
Question

Pdf color shift

  • May 11, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 1763 views

Hi,

I've been making pdfs for about 20 years now and I' having my first real issue in color shifts. I have jpg created from my photoshop document and was laying them into acrobat, upon which i am experiencing a color shift as if its converting it to CMYK. Th original PSD includes some smart objects from illustrator , and i believe all of my color profiles are good to go but any advice on how to set this up so that it is foolproof would greatly be appreciated. I should not that these are RGB jpgs intended for web

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    4 replies

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    May 13, 2018

    That is more worrying. What is your colour model and working space, and save settings for Photoshop PDF?

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    May 13, 2018

    You haven’t clarified how you are dragging in JPEGs. If you’re using Acrobat, stop. If you’re using something else please tell us what app.

    K
    kerebusAuthor
    Participant
    May 13, 2018

    Yes, I have been dragging jpgs into Acrobat. But I do get the same result when I export a pdf from photoshop (using "save as"), whether it is from the original layered photoshop doc or a flattened jpg version, I get the same color quality.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    May 13, 2018

    You saying “laying them into Acrobat”. If you’re using Acrobat to compose pages, best not to.

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    May 13, 2018

    Color “shifts” going from RGB (or LAB) to CMYK can be expected given that the gamut of CMYK color spaces is generally much narrower than that of RGB color spaces. The question is whether the RGB colors selected were outside (or to what degree they were outside) the gamut of the target CMYK color space.

    The only thing that becomes somewhat foolproof is to use the preview feature in Photoshop to ascertain what the converted image will look like in CMYK. If that preview shows you what you are now seeing in PDF, then the problem is your choice of RGB colors being outside the gamut of your CMYK color space and you need to adjust your RGB colors appropriately. If you aren't seeing the shift in Photoshop's CMYK preview, then I suggest you post some examples that we can download and further analyze for you.

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
      K
      kerebusAuthor
      Participant
      May 13, 2018

      Hi Dov, thank you for your response

      I wasn't intending to convert the RGB to CMYK. My current documents are set up in RGB, with the intent to deliver in RGB. I think the issue is with a setting I'm not aware of in Acrobat...Any JPG drag I into it is automatically subjected to a color shift, where it looks like what one would expect for an RGB to CMYK color shift, in that the colors tend to become a muted version of the original art. The same issue occurs when I output the art from photoshop as a PDF, whether it's from the original layered document or a flattened JPG of it.

      The current purpose of the pdf is to present to a client, and also provide a means for them to markup the art. So color correctness isn't the main point, however, I would like for them to see the art as intended so there isn't any confusion.

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