Color settings, export to CMYK etc.

[Stavre0D4C]

My experience with Indesign is limited to working with text and rarely some grayscale images. Now I'm trying to make a document with color images.

I prefer an RGB workflow and I plan to:

a) Export the final product to CMYK (e.g. FOGRA39) or

b) Export with no color change, with ICC profiles included and then I will convert to CMYK in Acrobat.

Some of the images have ICC profiles, some don't. I assume it's good to preserve them, they are there for a reason.

So now I'm experimenting with the settings and I have these questions:

1. Whenever I choose CMYK: FOGRA39 in Edit>Color Settings and I try to export a PDF, I get that message: "The preset specifies source profiles that don't match the current colour settings file". If I choose US Swop in Edit>Color Settings, this doesn't happen. Why?

2. Should I choose at export: include all the profiles, tagged source profiles or all RGB and tagged CMYK profiles?

3. Preserve numbers: yes or no?

4. My RGB workspace is sRGB (in Edit>Color Settings). I set Assign profiles to Discard (Use the current workspace). Is this OK?

5. As far as I understand, playing with the Edit>Color Settings only affects the way Indesign displays the colors on the screen and this is not something destructive?

Thank you very much

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

3) Preserve numbers: almost never. There are two situations when you might do this 

(a) when you KNOW FOR SURE that the profile that is assigned is wrong (making the colours view wrong). This changes the profile, and using your specialist knowledge, you expect the colours to snap back.

(b) you have special effects in the CMYK (such as overprint effects or registration grids) that are MORE IMPORTANT than accurate colour.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

I prefer an RGB workflow and I plan to:

a) Export the final product to CMYK (e.g. FOGRA39) or

b) Export with no color change, with ICC profiles included and then I will convert to CMYK in Acrobat.

Some of the images have ICC profiles, some don't. I assume it's good to preserve them, they are there for a reason.

There would be no need to make the CMYK conversions in Acrobat, all of the Adobe print apps use the same color management system, so a conversion from an RGB source to FOGRA39 at Export would produce the same CMYK output numbers as Exporting with No Color Conversion and making the conversion to FOGRA39 in Acrobat.

If you want an accurate color managed conversion from RGB to CMYK, the source RGB object has to have an embedded profile. If you place an RGB image with no embedded profile, it will get the InDesign document’s RGB profile assigned (its original color appearance might change). If the ID document has no RGB profile assignment,  the unprofiled image will get the current Color Settings RGB Working Space assigned, which could be anything—so...

My RGB workspace is sRGB (in Edit>Color Settings). I set Assign profiles to Discard (Use the current workspace). Is this OK?

No. Your Color Settings’ RGB CM Policy should be set to Preserve Profiles so that when you make a new document the RGB Working Space will get assigned to the document. If you discard the document’s RGB profile, document RGB colors or unprofiled RGB images would randomly change in appearance depending on what the current Color Settings RGB space happens to be set to.

Whenever I choose CMYK: FOGRA39 in Edit>Color Settings and I try to export a PDF, I get that message: "The preset specifies source profiles that don't match the current colour settings file". If I choose US Swop in Edit>Color Settings, this doesn't happen. Why?  

You can ignore the warning. It happens when the document profile assignments are something other than the default sRGB and US Web Coated SWOP—obviously there are many cases where the document profiles should not be those defaults.

Should I choose at export: include all the profiles, tagged source profiles or all RGB and tagged CMYK profiles?

For press work export using one of the PDF/X presets. PDF/X-4 keeps transparency live—if you want to export an all CMYK PDF/X-4, set the Output Destination to the correct press CMYK profile, which should also be your document’s assigned CMYK profile.

Preserve numbers: yes or no?

If you set the Output>Destination to Document CMYK, Convert to Destination and Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) will produce the same result.

As far as I understand, playing with the Edit>Color Settings only affects the way Indesign displays the colors on the screen and this is not something destructive?

Color Settings are your color management preferences for future documents. Color Settings don’t normally have any affect on existing documents because existing documents should be saved with the necessary color management profiles and policies. The exception would be if you set the Policies to Off, or strip a document’s profiles—in those cases color management falls back to the Color Settings, which again could be anything.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

Also, Preserve Numbers can be useful if you need to send the same job to two different presses with very different profiles—i.e. Coated GRACoL and US Newsprint (SNAP). In that case you might build most of your source InDesign colors as RGB, but need to protect certain CMYK colors like black or 1-color grays.

See this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/convert-mag-advert-profile-from-fogra39-working-...

[Stavre0D4C]

Test Screen Name and rob day, thank you for your time and your useful advices.

Meanwhile, I contacted the printer and they do things a bit differently than I expected. Maybe they're more "old school".

He sent me a .joboptions file with their settings and here are some of them:

Compatibility: Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3) - I assume they do this to avoid live transparencies. The transparency flatenner's resolution is set to High. I made a test page and it looks fine, but I have to check the whole document for problems.

Output settings:
Color Conversion: No

But then, in the lower section (PDF/X), it says:
Output Intent Profile Name: [name of the CMYK standard]
Output condition identifier: [name of the CMYK standard]

The printer said that they don't actually follow any CMYK standard, it's just they have to pick one in the settings. I don't know if this way of working is ussual. They accept any CMYK content and he explained me how they handle it, but I didn't understand everything. Also, he said that they ignore the ICC profiles.

In short, I don't think I can expect a perfect color accuracy from this printer. But depending on the budget, maybe I'll go there anyway.

The compression settings are as follows:

ZIP, Color and grayscale: Bicubic downsampling: 300 dpi (I wonder is this mandatory, but I forgot to ask. I'm aware that 300 dpi is the ussual resolution for print, but I wonder can you use a higher one and will the machine accept it or it will downsample it anyway). Monochrome is set to 1200 dpi.

[rob day]

If there is an Output Intent included then it would be a PDF/X—it sounds like PDF/X-3, is the Standard set to PDF/X-3:2002?

PDF/X-1a flattens live transparency and converts all process color to the designated CMYK Destination space. The PDF’s CMYK color is DeviceCMYK (no embedded profiles). The Output Intent Profile lets the printer know what the expected CMYK output space is, but the color itself is not profiled. Spot colors are left unchanged.

PDF/X-3 flattens live transparency, but allows a mix of CMYK, RGB and Lab process color—all RGB objects get an embedded profile. CMYK images with embedded profiles that conflict with document’s CMYK profile keep their embedded profile, otherwise all document CMYK gets exported as DeviceCMYK (no profile). The expectation is the DeviceCMYK values will output unchanged to the Output Intent. Spot colors are left unchanged.

PDF/X-4 is generally the same as PDF/X-3 but keeps transparency live.

Also, he said that they ignore the ICC profiles.

They probably mean they ignore CMYK profiles, but if they are also ignoring RGB profiles sending RGB color would likely be a problem.

[Stavre0D4C]

Yes, rob day, the standard is set to PDF/X-3:2002.

And thank you for your comment, it's interesting to know how all this works.

But there're so so many things that I still don't understand.

Please help me:

1. The printshop guy said that they do not follow any standard, but I can see the FOGRA27 standard under Output Intent Profile Name and Output Condition Identifier. This is so confusing.

As you said, the color will not be profiled, but this lets the printer know what the expected CMYK output space is. So having FOGRA27 in the settings is useful for the printshop, right? And without this setting, they'll get unexpected results?

Why am I asking this? Before I got this joboptions file, I asked someone what CMYK standard should I choose at export from Indesign or Acrobat? He said just put anything you like, the printshop does not follow any standard. But wait a minute, now we see FOGRA27 here, there must be a reason for that. They didn't set it that way just for fun, I guess.

2. And one more thing. We have an image with, say, US SWOP profile. As I understood you, in this case, within the PDF this converts to DeviceCMYK. It's no longer US SWOP? I'm sorry I'm so confused.

3. And the a question that bothers me so much:

You have a CMYK image with, say, US SWOP profile and an a copy of the same image with FOGRA profile, and then both of them are striped out of their profiles. They are both still CMYK, but will they look exactly the same?

[rob day]

The printshop guy said that they do not follow any standard, but I can see the FOGRA27 standard under Output Intent Profile Name and Output Condition Identifier. This is so confusing.

They are saying they don’t profile their presses, nor do they try to run them to match any established profile—a profile captures the printing conditions Dot Gain, ink colors, paper affect etc. On a conversion, the CMYK profile also handles how the black plate is created and sets the total ink limit. That will make it impossible to color manage and soft proof the job on your end with any precision (the CMYK profile is also used for the soft proof display accuracy). Whether that’s a problem depends on how fussy you are and a certain amount of luck. You might want to get a contract proof from them and not rely on a screen soft proof.

You can’t turn off color mangement with Adobe apps, so if you export to PDF/X there will always be an Output Intent listed. You can export to a CMYK destination and not include the destination profile or an output intent, but all that would do is make it impossible to make another color managed conversion to a different CMYK profile downstream because now the source profile is unknown.

So having FOGRA27 in the settings is useful for the printshop, right? And without this setting, they'll get unexpected results?

The output intent is only useful to the printer if they want to make an additional CMYK-to-CMYK conversion on their end, otherwise the CMYK numbers are going to output unchanged. Your printer doesn’t seem to care what the provided CMYK values are so I assume that’s what they are going to do.

We have an image with, say, US SWOP profile. As I understood you, in this case, within the PDF this converts to DeviceCMYK. It's no longer US SWOP? I'm sorry I'm so confused.

That depends on how you setup your InDesign Color Mangement Policies, and the PDF Export Output tab setup. When you create a new document, if you set the policy to Preserve Numbers (Ignore Embedded Profiles) or Off, InDesign will ignore embedded profiles and handle the image color as Document CMYK—your US SWOP image will preview as document CMYK without its CMYK values changing.

If your policy is set to Preserve Profiles and you place an image with a conflicting CMYK profile—for example US SWOP in a document with FOGRA27 assigned—and set the Output Destination to Document CMYK (FOGRA27), the SWOP image will get converted to FOGRA27 on the export. Its appearance will be maintained, but its CMYK numbers will change. 

If the Output tab is set to No Conversion the US SWOP profile will be embedded with the image in the PDF, and it would get converted into the destination the printer chooses at output.

They are both still CMYK, but will they look exactly the same?

No, the CMYK profile handles the conversion into your Monitor RGB profile for the softproof display, so the same CMYK numbers will display differently depending on the assigned CMYK profile. How much of a difference depends on the profiles. Here’s the same image with US Newsprint (right) vs. Fogra37 (left)—two very different press conditions. The soft proof shows the expected change if the same CMYK values are printed on the two presses:

[Stavre0D4C]

Thank you very much for your detailed explanations, rob day.

I understood a lot, but not 100%, to be honest.

As I said before, I asked someone to which CMYK standard I should convert my RGB images. He said it doesn't matter, which sounded crazy to me. But was his answer correct in this particular case, since this particular printer does not follow any standard?

And another thing. I will have to simplify now:

We see twin girls in front of us (i.e. two identical RGB images). Then they change their clothes (i.e. they convert to CMYK) and they put on a makeup (color profiles). One of the girls now wears a red lipstick and is named FOGRA and the other wears a pink lipstick and is now named US Newsprint. Now the images are no longer identical.

They enter this printshop that does not follow any standard and here their profiles are taken away (as I see it). So now that the "makeup" is gone, what do we see?

Do we see two identical images on paper or not? Ifyou say that now they're different, then the guy who answered me that I can pick CMYK profiles randomly is not so smart, to put it mildly. That's what I'm trying to establish, cause we argued about this with him.

[rob day]

I think the missing piece for you is understanding the difference between Convert to Profile... and Assign Profile...

Convert to Profile changes the output values and attempts to keep the original color appearance. You can see that happening in Photoshop when you use Edit>Convert to Profile and look at the new output values in the Info panel.

Here I’ve duplicated an RGB image—both have AdobeRGB assigned (which you can see in the lower left corner). The swatches on the right have color samplers, which show in the Info panel:

If I convert the top RGB version to Coated FOGRA27 via Edit>Convert to Profile, the image appearance doesn’t change and the Info panel samplers (set to Actual Color) show the FOGRA CMYK output values

If I convert the bottom copy to US Newsprint (SNAP), the color appearance is also maintained because on the conversion the US Newsprint (SNAP) profile is also assigned to the image. However the conversion to the newsprint profile produces very different output numbers:

Now if I assign a different profile to the newsprint CMYK via Edit>Assign Profile... the output values don’t change because there hasn’t been a conversion, but the preview changes with the new profile assignment to show how the unchanged US Newsprint CMYK values would print on a  US Web Coated SWOP profiled press:

[Stavre0D4C]

Thank you once again for your effort, rob day. Indeed, I confuse some things and I have to learn a lot.

Exactly for this reason, I hired an experienced designer, who was supposed to help me with advices and who was supoosed to be a 'proxy' between me and the printshop, but his advices were scant and confusing, so that's why I have to ask people on forums.

His "advices" were limited to: "Pick any CMYK profile, it doesn't matter", "The printed result will not be accurate anyway" and "If you bother me with such questions, I might end the cooperation with you". Although I understood that I cannot expect a 100% color accuracy from this particular printshop, I was not happy with his attitude and my position was that there must be some logic in everything we do, we should not just click things randomly.

If this was a court, based on my testimony and the evidence you kindly provided, would you say that this guy was wrong?

Thanks

[rob day]

The printed result will not be accurate anyway

Accurate relative to what?

For screen soft proofing both the assigned CMYK profile and the system’s monitor profile affect the screen preview, so the accuracy of a soft proof depends on both profiles. Doesn’t sound like either the printshop or the designer understand how conversions and color management works, so I would get a contract proof before going to press. If the job is printing on a coated sheet on a sheetfed press, I would try GRACoL Coated.

[Stavre0D4C]

Accurate relative to what?

He simply meant that I won't get the same colors on paper as I see them on my screen, i.e. no matter what I do, the print might still appear darker or lighter, 'warmer' or 'colder' than that. He never explained anything in detail, so I think that what he really meant was more like: "Stop bothering me with your petty things".

I'm aware that what you see on your screen and what you get on paper cannot be exactly the same. Or maybe that's possible if you have a good experience, perfect equipment and settings, and most importantly, a good budget, all of which I don't have. I don't demand perfection, but I believe that one should aim for optimal results. But clicking randomly here and there (like this designer suggested) doesn't sound to me like a good way to achieve that.

Doesn’t sound like either the printshop or the designer understand how conversions and color management works

My cooperation with this designer is over. It was two months of agony, during which I didn't receive any help from him. I'm afraid that I will not go to this printshop. I just feel bad now, because when you are ignorant about these things like me, you have doubts like: am I judging him too harsh, maybe I'm missing something etc. I posted a separate story about this, but no one replied.