setting for printing in Fresco

[yyzdrawingdept]

How can I set the file to CMYK in Fresco？

[sueg58667637 · Accepted solution]

Hi YYZ.

Fresco only supports RGB and HSB color profiles.

Sue.

[OHWEB]

Hi, would you mind being more specific? RGB and HSB are color models, not exactly profiles.
Fresco on Windows doesn't seem to have any mechanism to set color profiles (actually, I couldn't find any setting related to colour management at all).
Does it assume sRGB? Is it managed at all?

[Theresa J]

If you need a CMYK file you can export the document as a PSD and then open it in Photoshop to do the conversion. Here are directions https://community.adobe.com/t5/Fresco/How-about-moving-the-drawing-to-Photoshop/td-p/10635833.

However you might be better off letting your printer do the conversion. Check with them first.

[Joely]

Why would you need CMYK in 2019? We're living in the age of «media neutral» workflows…

[MollyzMom]

Book (print) publishing still requires CMYK.

[Kenneth Kawamoto]

Print factories require CMYK PDF but you should prepare your artwork in RGB and the conversion to CMYK should be done as the last step - usually done in InDesign or Acrobat (or by printing machine as Theresa said)

[DaveJCummings]

Oh yes! I design ads for print and digital and they have to be in CMYK, because of how it's put together and if it's in RGB, it could cause the images to look wonky, colorwise 

[OHWEB]

As it was mentioned earlier, modern workflows have shifted into working all the original artwork in RGB and leave the conversion to CMYK to the end of the pipe (either done by the print provider or by the artist following the specs provided by the printer).
Using RGB and soft-proofing features will avoid surprises and keep the workflow tight, without needing to sacrifice color latitude by early binding to a CMYK profile.
However, it is crucial to know the colorspace of the image. RGB and CMYK are merely colour models, and without a proper profile definition you can't be sure the conversions will be done properly.
For example, if your RGB image is tagged with the sRGB colorspace, colour managment will know what transformation apply if yoñu want it converted to, say Swop v2 CMYK. If you don't know your source and destination colorspaces, you can't be sure the conversion will be ok.
This is well-defined in most of the Adobe apps, but Fresco in its minimalistic approach seems to be either lacking or hiding those preferences.

[Ardoq]

It seems clear to me that whoever suggests working in RGB and then converting to CMYK in the last step doesn't have the slightest idea of what they want to work with printed paper.
Converting from RGB to CMYK ALWAYS results in color distortion.
You spend your days setting up the monitor, choosing the colours, doing the print tests and then... Then you find yourself with a different job than the one you had planned.
The difference is seen in the details.
It would be nice if Fresco also allowed you to work in CMYK as Photoshop and Illustrator already do.

[OHWEB]

No, you're just wrong. You don't need CMYK in Fresco.
All what you need is a decent soft-proofing mechanism and a few gamut restrictions/warnings to make sure your RGB gamut doesn't exceed the printable gamut of a certain CMYK target and that's it. No shifts, no clips.

CMYK is not a silver bullet to produce perfect prints, and computers do a pretty bad job representing substractive mixes on a screen that is emissive. And pixels are pixels. You can repeat to yourself that a CMYK digital file is actually CMYK, but it's ALWAYS an additive representation of CMYK values using the best approximation available.
So, basically: If you can see it on-screen and you think the colour is right, it's because there is an appropriate RGB value for that colour representation. If those RGB values are restricted to the gamut of your CMYK output, then they will print just fine.
Otherwise it would be impossible to print digital photographs because cameras don't produce CMYK photos, for instance.

Oh, and btw, I've been printing stuff on professional presses for the last 25 years. I think that after thousands of prirt runs and happy customers I can believe I have a slight idea of this.