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nickw29628051
Known Participant
October 7, 2022
Question

File size has become massive after converting to CMYK, even after converting back to RGB?

  • October 7, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 963 views

I was just toying around with art I illutrated converting to it CMYK and after saving, the file size has become massive and now even converting back to RGB the file is huge. This is problem because I need to send this file to my artist colloborator.

 

How can I reduce the file size back down again?

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3 replies

NB, colourmanagement
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 8, 2022

Whatever you do, never convert to CMYK then back to RGB, colour will be lost and that may include detail in saturated areas. 

 

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer:: co-author: 'getting colour right'
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 7, 2022

Did you have "use dither" turned on in your colour settings or convert to profile settings when converting from RGB to CMYK?

Legend
October 7, 2022

What are the comparative sizes? Use your backup of the RGB file to give us both figures.

nickw29628051
Known Participant
October 7, 2022

Original is 70mb the converted and then converted back to CMYK is 180mb!

 

But I've just found a work around by converting it to Grayscale and then to RGB to comes back to its original file size but I could only do this because my art luckily is black and white. I will not be touching the color space again!

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
October 8, 2022
quote

Original is 70mb the converted and then converted back to CMYK is 180mb!


By @nickw29628051

That seems a bit high. When I convert a 70MB document to CMYK with dither, it lands in at 95MB. 

As outlined earlier, you don't want to convert to grayscale then RGB etc. 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"