Need To Remove ICC From CMYK Images

[Chris Panny]

I'm preparing images for a childrens book to be layed out in InDesign. The print shop, which is overseas, asked me to remove the ICC from all of the images. Right now they are CMYK US Web Coated (SWOP) v2.

I've tried saving out the file with Embed Color Profile: US Web Coated unchecked. 

I've also tried creating a new blank CMYK file, with color profile set to Don't Color Manage and pasting the layers from my original source file into this new one. 

When I save either method and look at in Bridge, the File Properties still show Color Profile: U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2

How do I remove this profile so they're untagged? 

[George_F]

Try going to Edit > Assign Profile and selecting Don’t Color Manage This Document.

Cheers

[Chris Panny]

I beleive that only works while the file is open in PS.

[TheDigitalDog]

Bad idea: untagged data, especially CMYK. 

Trust (them) but verify this request. 

And why did the data get converted to SWOP v2 in the first place? 

[Chris Panny]

The image files werre sent to me by the illustrator in sRGB 300ppi. I converted them to CMYK in PS. My Color Settings are set to No. America General Purpose 2 defaults.

The print shop is in China. The rep wrote me and said this:

Please change all to be CMYK and without any ICC. 

With RGB or ICC, the color will changes when we change it to be CMYK for printing.

[TheDigitalDog]

Why SWOP V2; did the print house instruct you to use that specific flavor of CMYK? 

You may want to consider the following before going any further:

http://digitaldog.net/files/CMYKPart1.pdf

http://digitaldog.net/files/CMYKPart2.pdf

[Chris Panny]

The print shop wants me to not use any flavor of CMYK.

Swop v2 was the default in my Adobe color settings when i installed the apps.

Thanks for sending the PDFs. I'll take a look. 

[TheDigitalDog]

What you are being told makes no sense. SWOP v2 IS CMYK. 

That this is one of thousands of flavors of CMYK being a default in Photoshop doesn't make it the right flavor of CMYK. 

Ask the printer if they will accept tagged RGB: in your case, sRGB. They can convert to the specific flavor of CMYK for their print processes.

Read the two articles.

[Conrad_C]

The print shop wants me to not use any flavor of CMYK.

By @Chris Panny

Yeah that sounds odd. Using CMYK numbers always assumes a specific CMYK, because the numbers only get you the color you expect when the values are applied to a specific set of process color inks. For example, putting US Web Coated SWOP values through a different process (such as sheet fed uncoated) will get you slightly different colors. (RGB is the same way; sRGB values produce a different color than Adobe RGB values, and if someone tells you no RGB color space was used, that just means an RGB color space was assumed but they don’t realize it.)

The print shop’s requirements are understandable, they’re consistent with what was standard practice…30 years ago. Things have changed, today’s software lets you do things like use a “safe CMYK” workflow, where whether or not CMYK images have profiles, any profiles will be ignored and they will be printed literally according to the CMYK values. This workflow has been supported by Adobe InDesign for many years, they can set it up in InDesign Color Settings. So it should not be necessary for them to make clients strip ICC profiles because they should be able to simply have InDesign ignore them.

If the print shop is OK with everybody converting to default CMYK, then I guess they’re OK with that. But even then…you might want to clarify what they think the defaults are, because the US default (Web Coated SWOP v2) might be different for China/Asia; Photoshop includes CMYK defaults for US, Europe, and Japan and they are not the same.

Now, it’s possible that what is going on, and a reason it might not be a big deal to them, is that maybe the print shop is just doing it the way they’ve always done it since before modern color management, and if they work with hundreds of US print jobs every year, maybe they are quite used to files coming in as US Web Coated SWOP, and so maybe their entire operation for US customers is set up and built around that. That’s just speculation for why they don’t feel like they need to be more specific. But, they should still understand that they are using a specific CMYK, even if it is a default.

As for the results you’re getting from Photoshop, that’s odd…Normally, it should be enough to do what you first mentioned: Save a copy with profile embedding disabled. Bridge should report it as Untagged. That’s what I got below, after doing Save a Copy with and without the CMYK profile from Photoshop 24.1 and viewing them both in Bridge 13.0.1.583.

[Chris Panny · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply. It gives me things to consider. It's an odd request to strip out the ICC but that's how the print ship requested it. I connected with another designer who also worked with the same print shop and even the same rep and he also thought it was an odd request. 

As for PS not removing the ICC as I described, I don't know why it wouldn't do this. In the end, it was faster for me to creeat a blank document that was not color managed and copy | paste the images to the blank doc. 

[TheDigitalDog]

Photoshop can and will remove the ICC profile. 

[NB, colourmanagement]

A CMYK profile is a description of the behaviour of a particular press or type of press. You MUST be told the correct CMYK ICC profile to use when converting from RGB, because the chosen profile sets the ink recipes. Those recipes are press-type specific. More here on that.

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]

One alternative to resaving is to use the command line program ExifTool to stip out the ICC profile:

exiftool -icc_profile:all= 'PathToFileOrFolder'

This is formatted for the Mac, for Win change the single straight quotes ' to double straight quotes ".

A backup of the original file will also be created with an _original at the end of the filename.

Once you are happy that all is working as expected, you can use the following command to strip the ICC without making a backup file:

exiftool -overwrite_original -icc_profile:all= "PathToFileOrFolder"

You can simply put in the code without the 'PathToFileOrFolder' bit and then drag in the file or folder into the window for Terminal.app or CMD.exe - however, there has a be a space after the all= bit.

__________

As for the conversion, if the overseas printer is not printing to US Web Coated (SWOP) v2 conditions, then your CMYK separations may not produce the correct colour.

[Chris Panny]

This looks pretty interesting. I'll try this out too.