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diatoday
Participating Frequently
June 27, 2023
Question

How to optimize grayscale author photo ingramspark

  • June 27, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 1700 views

We are printing a black-and-white book on IngramSpark. The book is all text except for an author photo on the about the author page. The photo was taken with an iPhone, so is high resolution and RGB to begin with. 

To prepare the photo, I used Photoshop. I cropped and converted the photo from RGB to grayscale. My understanding is that Photoshop deletes any color management profiles when it changes a photo to grayscale.

At the 2 inch wide size of the photo, the resolution was 1171 PPI. IngramSpark requires 300 ppi. I I left that high resolution and let InDesign lower it to 300 ppi using the PDF/X – 2002 adobe preset export filter.
->Should I have used  Photoshop's automatic resample feature to bring the PPI down to 300 before placing the photo in InDesign?

I imported the photo to InDesign at same size (2 inches wide). I exported the book using PDF/X2002. Results  in the printed proof from IngramSpark are pitiful. No help from customer service although they did apparently try to help.

->How can I best turn a good RGB smart phone photograph to a good grayscale image when printing a book with IngramSpark? What part should I do in Photoshop and what part should I do inInDesign and how should I export to PDF from InDesign?

Any help will be much appreciated. 

 

    2 replies

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 27, 2023

    I cropped and converted the photo from RGB to grayscale. My understanding is that Photoshop deletes any color management profiles when it changes a photo to grayscale.

     

    Also, Photoshop does color manage the conversion from RGB to Grayscale, so the Gray profile you choose for the Destination would matter because the destination profile affects the grayscale output numbers.

     

     

     

     

     

    Results in the printed proof from IngramSpark are pitiful

     

    In what way? E.g., Is the output too dark?

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 27, 2023

    Also, there are two ways to make the conversion to Grayscle in Photoshop—either Image>Mode>Grayscale, or Convert to Profile... in either case changing the destination profile changes the output values.

     

    If you use Image>Mode>Grayscale, the current Color Settings’ Working Gray Profile is used as the destination. Here you can see the different output values depending on the profile in the Info panel. Using the default 20% Dot Gain I get output values of 30%, 56%, and 77% for the samplers:

     

     

    If I use Dot Gain 30% the values are considerably lower—23%, 46%, and 66%

     

     

    Technically sGray is a Display, not an Output class profile, but its output values are similar to 30% Dot gain:

     

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 27, 2023

    By the way, Rob, how do you get that cool scale at the top of your photos showing different values of black. Is that part of Adobe Photoshop?


    I made it. I’ve attached a version for Grayscale and CMYK, paste it into a grayscale doc and the Info panel set to Actual color should give you matching values. The CMYK version would show K values when pasted into a CMYK doc. Neither have a profile embedded so there won’t be a conversion when you paste.

      James Gifford—NitroPress
      James Gifford—NitroPress
      Legend
      June 27, 2023

      Rob Day has a comprehensive answer he posts at intervals; you might sift through some similar questions to find it. Look for the classic car photos. 🙂

       

      The short answer, though, is to resize the placed image to no more than about 600 ppi effective, to take some load off of ID and the export process. Extremely overscale images bring nothing to the results except resource hogging and slow processes.

       

      Especially for sparse photos like an author shot, I have had good luck using sGray, with KDP, Lulu and KDP.

       

      Those two steps should take you to a better result. Rob's approach is much more layered; you might want to review it as well. 

      D
      diatodayAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      June 27, 2023

      Thank you, James. I have read Rob Day’s post but didn’t understand how best to apply his advice to this situation. 

      Best,
      Diana
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