Colours to display same as printing

[millyhowell_GD]

Up until a few years ago I had no issues with my CMYK colours displaying on the screen as they would when printed. 

Now they are vastly different - eg. to get a dusty orange, the cmyk values show on my screen as quite a bright orange. Even viewing after export as PDF it's the same bright colour.  We had to go through a lot of swatches to get it to print the right colour.

I've now had to change printers and will most likely be using online services. I'd just like to feel confident that what I see on the screen is as close as possible to the printed product.

Would really appreciate some help in setting up indesign settings to show this!

[Willi Adelberger]

Does your output colors profile correspond to the requirements of your printer?

Do you use RGB images—as recommended in InDesign—with the correct RGB color profile?

Is the CMS correct set up?

[millyhowell_GD]

these are the colour settings.
Transparency blend space is document CMYK
swatch is setup as below

[Peter Spier]

Your coolor settings are set to ignore embedded CMYK profiles and preserve numbers. In my ipinion this is a huge mistake. Unless your CMYK images also happen to be in Fogra 93 Coated, you are guaranteed to have some sort of color shift.

I like to think of color profiles as telling you how to pronounce words in the local dialect -- same spelling can be peronounced very differntly depending on where you are. Same color numbers can appear differnt depen ding on the profile, wheich describes the ink/paper/press combination for CMYK output.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@millyhowell_GD

Have you calibrated your monitor?

Have you updated system or InDesign recently? 

If you want to be sure that your prints will be correct - you have to request a "print proof" - without it - you can't refuse to accept final printed material.

[millyhowell_GD]

it's happening across 3 different mac computers. One is brand new and still having the same problem. Problem has been happening for 2 years so there have been multiple updates over that time

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

it's happening across 3 different mac computers. One is brand new and still having the same problem. Problem has been happening for 2 years so there have been multiple updates over that time

By millyhowell_GD

Not sure I understand? 

So for two years you were working on un-calibrated system?

[millyhowell_GD]

I'm not really sure what you mean sorry. I'm not very tech savvy when it comes to this.

My printer and I found the colours that worked for these 2 particular files through trial and error so I haven't touched any settings since. It seemed like it was something specific to his equipement as other files I've had printed at officeworks havent had the issue, but they've not been so flat colour heavy and more so photos. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@millyhowell_GD

OK. I'll do my best. 

In order to be able to know - with great precision - how printed document will look like - you need two things: 

1) profile of the printer, 

2) profile of the monitor.

Without those two things - as you've said - it's trial and error. Now, you're saying that you want to go online...

Unfortunately, they won't waste time for you - why would they? The best you can get would be a profile done for their specific printer - or universal one for the same printer they are using. 

Monitor - even high end monitors differ, so it's important to calibrate specific monitor. 

Then, there is a case of the lighting - the same color will look differently if the light around you would be fluorescent, incandescent, cool led, warm led, natural light in the morning or evening, etc.

I've no idea where you are located - but calibrating monitor shouldn't be expensive - and doesn't have to be done too often - but you should definitely get one done ASAP. 

What is your current monitor - make and model? 

[millyhowell_GD]

Im so sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I have a 2024 imac. Below is a photo showing the settings available to recalibrate. Located in Australia. I'm just wanting it to be somewhat close, it doesnt have to be perfect. Working on screen with fluro orange when it prints dusty orange is really hard! But it's only one program I have this issue with, I use my computer for gaming and dont want it to change that!

[Willi Adelberger]

You need a device to calibrate your monitor and then calibrate.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@millyhowell_GD

Not sure how to respond to that 😉 

So gaming is more important to you? 😉 

Anyway, you can have multiple profiles assigned to your monitor - and then apply them depends on the application. 

[Conrad_C]

If you have an iMac and no calibration device, then from your screen shot it looks like it’s already set properly to the default iMac display profile.

You should never change it to any of the other current choices on that menu, because a display profile should always represent the exact state of that display. A 2024 iMac has a display that should be P3, so in theory the one other choice in that menu that could work is Display P3. But Display P3 would only be correct if the display was measured and found to represent exactly P3. But hitting the target gamut precisely is rare in all but the most expensive displays, so that is why Apple had provided the iMac factory profile by default…it could be a better representation of the true behavior of that panel. But an even better profile would be one generated by a display calibration device.

But anyway, if iMac is currently selected, that should be close enough to correct that it is probably not the cause of colors looking a lot different than before. It’s a lot more likely that the problem is how the colors are being proofed on screen for printing.

Did the problem start when old Macs were replaced by newer Macs? Because older Mac displays only covered sRGB, and the newer Macs with P3 displays can display more saturated colors. For example, if someone specifies a color with RGB values above 200 (high saturation), on an sRGB display that color might display sort of close to the limited CMYK gamut. (It was inaccurate, but it was closer to CMYK so it sort of worked anyway.) But with the P3 gamut, that RGB range might display more saturated.

Here is a huge, huge question: Have you ever used soft-proofing? That means intentionally simulating the document through the printer profile, done in InDesign using the command View > Proof Colors using settings in the View > Proof Setup submenu.

If the answer is no, then you’ve been lucky in the past, and you should learn how to soft-proof. Because on today’s displays with wider color gamuts, soft-proofing is valuable for seeing color as the printer would, not as the screen would, by constraining colors to the printing conditions (ink + substrate + press/printer settings).

If the answer is yes, you have been soft-proofing, then the next question is: What are your settings in the View > Proof Setup submenu? There is a critical follow-up question: In your screen shot, your Color Settings use a CMYK Working Space of Coated FOGRA39. Can you confirm that those are the exact printing conditions you are using with your printing service? Because if that is set incorrectly, the View > Proof Colors command will misrepresent the CMYK colors.

If the display profile is good, and soft-proofing is set up correctly, and soft-proofing is enabled, then the colors on screen will be as close to print colors are you can get on an RGB display.

If any of those is not set correctly, display colors are not really under control, especially on a wide color gamut display which all current Mac displays are.

[millyhowell_GD]

soft proofing might be the key! I learnt everything a decade ago in uni and there's probably a lot they didnt teach us and with so many tools available with this software im sure theres a lot I dont know about! Thank you so much I will look into this more and give it a go!