Colour Profiles in Australia

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 16, 2024
3 replies
3482 views

Hi All,

I have recently moved to Australia and was wondering what colour profile I should choose for my general use?

North America General Purpose 2
CMYK - US Web Coated (SWOP) v2

RGB - sRGB IEC61966-2.1

or

Europe General Purpose 3

CMYK - Coated FOGRA39

RGB - Adobe RGB (1988)

In my current job, I create some web content, as well as print collateral (printed here in Australia) and packaging (printed in China).

I would love to get some insight from fellow Australian designers... All info I can find online talks about color profile standards in the US or Europe.

Many thanks,
Marie

This topic has been closed for replies.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @MarieMelb , generally speaking when choosing a Color Settings setup, where you live is less important than the printing method.

The CMYK profiles that ship with InDesign are all for separated offset printing. US Web Coated SWOP is a web pess offset profile for coated papers, and Coated FOGRA is a generic sheetfed offset profile for coated papers. None of the included CMYK profiles would be for a shortrun digital composite printer—typically composite printers use "RGB" drivers and the final conversion into the print space happens in the driver at output. So usually it is better to send profiled RGB color to a composite shortrun press rather than making an extra conversion to a random CMYK profie like the default US Web Coated SWOP, which will have to be converted again at output.

M

MarieMelbAuthor

New Participant

Thanks @rob day That makes sense. Would you use RGB - sRGB IEC61966-2.1 as your main colour profile then?
I just want to set up one colour profile as my main one, which is used every time I create a new doc. Then, change it on a few occasions when it's not suitable for a specific job, like if I print offset.
Many thanks for your help!

rob day

Community Expert

sRGB is a relatively small RGB space which clips a significant percentage of most CMYK print color spaces making their color gamuts even smaller than they already are. AdobeRGB or a similar large gamut RGB space is better for print.

If you are working on a doc for both print and screens set the Export destination to sRGB for the screen version.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

I'm in Ireland and I've used Coated Fogra 39 for years too no problems.

But in reality - you should get joboptions file from the printers in Australia that best suits their press settings.

F

flaming1

Inspiring

I don't know if it happens in Australia, but often if you ask for joboptions from a printer in New Zealand you're just met with confusion. They simply don't use them.
Asking even some of the big printers what colour profile they would like us to use for a particular job and they simply don't have an answer.