CMYK+PAN to CMYKOV conversion

[grafik2_5837]

Hello

Could someone help us with this conversion?

We have artwork CMYK  +  Pantone (could be one or many).

Now we want to convert it to CMYK+ORANGE+VIOLET values.

I have theese values in csv.

each pantone, separate file -->number of pantone.csv

Conversion should work with % value of pantone too.

[m1b]

Hi @grafik2_5837, just putting aside the question of converting to CMYKOV... can you even specify a color manually as CMYKOV in Illustrator? I did a quick google of "CMYKOV Adobe Illustrator" and nothing relevent appeared. Maybe you can't do it? Or need a third-party plug-in?

EDIT: you could create a spot color of "Orange" and "Violet", then add a second and third fill color (all overprinting), but you probably couldn't automate this via scripting because the scripting API only provides access to the single basic fill and stroke, not the extra ones.

It would be good to post a sample document (save as illustrator editable pdf to post here) showing (a) before conversion and (b) after conversion, so we know what exactly you want to achieve.

- Mark

[Ton Frederiks]

Do you have a printer with these inks?

If so, the conversion is done during printing.

[grafik2_5837]

Yes, we have INDIGO cmykov press. I want to check files before RIP.

file:

[Ton Frederiks]

You cannot do that in  Illustrator, the rip does the conversion from RGB to CMYKOV

[grafik2_5837]

RGB 😮 ... please ...

[Ton Frederiks]

RGB 😮 ... please ...

By @grafik2_5837

How else would you get the extended color gamut of your inks for your images?

[m1b]

@grafik2_5837 what Ton said makes perfect sense because RGB has a much wider gamut than CMYK.

Except you are not converting from CMYK—you are converting from PANTONE, which are usually stored (if I remember correctly) as LAB colors for viewing on screen. Does the Indigo print PANTONE colors correctly, as in does it have a custom conversion scheme from PANTONE to CMYKOV without reference to the LAB color in the Illustrator file?

Anyway, you are talking about manually making this conversion, using a scheme of your own as shown in your Excel document, so I will infer that the RIP doesn't convert PANTONE colors in the way you want.

But, alas, unfortunately it comes back to the issue I mentioned earlier that we cannot write a script to add secondary or tertiary fillColors because the scripting API doesn't allow it—a terrible lack, in my opinion. So I'm not sure that we can help you much.

- Mark

[hhas01]

> Anyway, you are talking about manually making this conversion, using a scheme of your own as shown in your Excel document, so I will infer that the RIP doesn't convert PANTONE colors in the way you want.

This.

That OP presents an Excel with CMYK[OV] numbers written in it rather suggests it is OP’s production process which is dysfunctional. Asking automators here how to script a hack onto a kludge onto a bodge of a process won’t make their artworks better; it will make their process worse. The only right answer is: “Don’t do that.”

I would suggest OP has an honest and forthright conversation with their RIP vendor to understand what OP actually needs for a modern proofing process. (As opposed to what OP thinks they need… based on out-of-date working practices and deficient upstream tools, which their modern RIP software already expends a fair bit of effort compensating and correcting for).

[hhas01]

Yes, we have INDIGO cmykov press. I want to check files before RIP.

Why? To what end?

Illustrator’s color model is rooted firmly in the 1980s and has hardly changed since. Raw CMYK numbers are pretty meaningless when your modern RIP software and digital press run on ICC profiles; you should be hanging your proofing process off that.

…

p.s. Serif’s Affinity supports 16-bit Lab documents out of the box, so Adobe’s failure to keep pace with modern print tech should be especially embarrassing considering how much they originally invented. Honestly, the print world sacks off CMYK sliders and Pantone books for Lab, the better.

[creative_curiosity1549]

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@hhas01  schrieb:

Raw CMYK numbers are pretty meaningless when your modern RIP software and digital press run on ICC profiles; you should be hanging your proofing process off that.

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With proper color management your CMYK numbers have a lot of meaning and a modern RIP software should be able to handle that.

[hhas01]

Hi Monica,

The key phrase there is “proper color management”. Raw CMYK numbers mean nothing except in context of an accurate ICC profile.

That being said, 8-bit CMYK is still a rotten working space. A CMYK gamut with ICC press profile is small and low-fidelity; it doesn’t tolerate adjustments and doesn’t accomodate the far larger gamut of modern CMYKOGV presses (unless you stretch it to something silly, which would be its own world of pain). Hence the creation of Pantone inks, which bypass CMYK and ICC profiles entirely. Hence Adobe RGB/Large Gamut RGB as a working space in more modern workflows (although still not ideal).

In Illustrator’s 80s-era color model, 1 Pantone color = 1 separation. This model made sense when output was traditional litho presses:

1 Pantone color = 1 separation = 1 film = 1 plate + 1 bucket of pre-mixed ink => 1 color on paper.

But Pantones are just as meaningless as CMYK values in modern 6-8 color digital printing. They are supported purely for backwards-compatibility, i.e. serving a highly conservative upstream industry that is tightly wedded to working practices which are now 30 years out of date and terrified to change.

OP’s fundamental problem is, I think, that they don’t realize just how unconnected the “CMYK” and “Pantone” numbers they read in their Illustrator files are from what finally ends up on each “plate”. (Yes, I know Indigo uses rollers, eliminating plates—my whole point is that classical litho mindset should not be applied.)

The first thing OP’s RIP software will do is take apart their artwork file and translate all of its colors into something modern and sane—presumably 16-bit Lab colorspace. From there it will generate its actual separations, relying on math and exact knowledge of substrate and inks.

All of these conversions are mediated by the device-specific ICC profiles installed. Thus, any resemblance to OP’s original raw numbers is entirely coincidental. And any resemblance to OP’s soft- and/or hard-proofs is critically dependent on whether or not their ICC device profiles are any good in the first place.

The only thing artworking in an 8-bit CMYK colorspace gives you is poorer-quality data to send to the above workflow. Unfortunately, while Photoshop supports Lab/16 documents, Illustrator still does not. (Ironic for an industry-standard platform on which over a trillion dollars of print work gets artworked every year!)

The correct working colorspace for a modern production department should be 16-bit Lab. This represents all human-visible colors as absolute values completely independent of any and all input and output devices. Install high-quality screen and press ICC profiles for on-screen representation and out-of-gamut detection, and a color editing GUI that isn’t from AI 8, and Illustrator operators could be rocking the bleeding edge of print.

We can live in hope.

But hey, I’m old enough to remember when “color management” meant bending your CRT’s RGB knobs to vaguely resemble your most recent Cromalin. 🙂

[creative_curiosity1549]

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@hhas01  schrieb:

That being said, 8-bit CMYK is still a rotten working space. A CMYK gamut with ICC press profile is small and low-fidelity; it doesn’t tolerate adjustments

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And what kind of adjustments do you want to make to your vector file that require 16 bit CIELAB colorspace? 

photos can live inside your PDF as RGB files with a color profile applied to them.

[Bobby Henderson]

The CIELAB color space is great for certain kinds of photo image editing tasks. But who actually does graphic design work in that color model? Even though plain CMYK has some limitations the color model is far easier to understand (even more easy than RGB). So CMYK has far more universal use. In many workflow situations more than one person and more than one computer setup is opening the art file. Even if I can create vector art within Affinity Designer using 16-bit LAB color space it would be an adventure giving that artwork to someone else for a task like printing a billboard face. Chances are they would kick the file back to me and tell me to convert it to CMYK or even RGB.

[hhas01]

[deleted as off-topic]

[creative_curiosity1549]

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@hhas01  schrieb:

Because Canva vs Express is going to commoditize the tar out of global print in the next 5–10 years; and whoever makes their modern color-accurate design-to-output turnkey pipeline work right first, wins.

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LOL. 

Ever looked at the monitors people use for their Canva?

Yeah those. They don't even present the same colors on Tuesday.

Good luck with your unicorn print shop.

[Bobby Henderson]

What kind of RIP software is processing the art files? Is it an app that came included with the printer? I would hope that is the case since orange and violet are unusual for additional, gamut-extending ink colors. Most six-color large format printers have light magenta and light cyan inks (in addition to the CMYK inks).

Either way, the RIP software chooses how to apply those added inks, especially when simulating Pantone spot color ink values. I can't just add additional light cyan and light magenta color channels to an Illustrator document. I have to use the Pantone swatches. The RIP software should have its own built-in Pantone color libraries and CMYKOV formulas for those spot colors.

[Ton Frederiks]

These Indigo presses. with multiple inks can simulate many Pantone colors and use the additional inks to add to the CMYK  gamut. The rip does the conversion. 

[grafik2_5837]

To all responders.

I onlny ask for script. If it`s posible.

I don`t need your opininion what I should do or not with this conversion.

[Ton Frederiks]

As said before, you cannot do that in Illustrator.

[grafik2_5837]

Thank You

Topic CLOSED.

[hhas01]

You’ve already got the short and long answers:

1. Illustrator as-is cannot represent CMYKOGV values, as Illustrator documents only support pre-digital RGB/CMYK [+optional spot] color models.

If you want to dig really deep, there is a C++ API (IAIColorSpace) that can represent additional color spaces and the `AIColor` struct that represents individual RGB/CMYK/spot/etc color values has a `kAdvanceColor` option which suggests it may be able to represent color values in other colorspaces. But Illustrator’s SDK documentation is hopelessly lacking and contains no information or examples on their usage, so I can’t even tell you if those APIs could be capable of doing what you want, never mind how to actually do it. So unless you’re an organization like Esko that pays a ton of money for a direct private line to Adobe’s developer teams, those APIs are closed to you.

2. Your whole request smells of this.

As a professional automation developer, one of my jobs is to advise my customer when the thing they’re asking for would be a very bad idea/already has a far much way of doing it which they’re maybe not aware of/is literally impossible. Of course, if someone insists on digging that hole for themselves anyway then that’s their perogative; but I certainly won’t be helping/billing them to bury themselves as that would be unethical on my part.

TL;DR: Unless you can tell us what your end goal is—e.g. getting your soft/hard proofs to match your Indigo output more accurately—we can’t help you further. And if you can tell us, the chances are the correct way to do it is not the way you’re wanting to do it. Either way, the people best placed to help you are your RIP vendors, so you should talk to them first.