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TRONIX
Participant
October 3, 2019
Question

Print Preset RGB not CMYK

  • October 3, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 2762 views

Does anyone know why when you create a new document in Photoshop CC 2019 and you click that it is for print it switches the color preference to RGB and not to CMYK? Is it something I can change in prefrences? Seems like this is a new thing that changed in the last update.

4 replies

TRONIX
TRONIXAuthor
Participant
October 11, 2019

Thanks for all the replies after talking to a few print houses and the factory I work with in China seems like RGB is what to use if you are not printing on Off Set Printer. So the correct answer would be it all depends on how it's getting printed.

 

BUT.. This still doesnt answer my question as to why if you click the print tab when creating a new doc in Photoshop it changes to RGB and not CMYK like it does in Indesign and Illustrator. Why is Photoshop different when they are all created by Adobe. I could understand if it was a differnt design studio like Quark or Microsoft.

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 3, 2019

If you convert a RBG to CMYK you get a lot of color shift.

 

If you set Proof Setup to Working CMYK and turn on Proof Colors, you will get a preview of how out-of-gamut RGB colors will be brought into the Color Settings’ Working CMYK space. If you want to check the output numbers for a conversion to the working CMYK space, set the Info panel eyedroppers to CMYK—you can get both a CMYK preview and check output numbers without making the final conversion.

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 3, 2019

who would be using photoshop would be professional that would be sending thing to print

 

Even when you are creating documents for a CMYK offset press, the best practice is to work in an large gamut RGB editing space (with Proof Setup on and set to document CMYK), and then make the conversion to CMYK later in the workflow when the actual press profile is known. A color managed conversion to the final press profile can happen in Photoshop, but the same conversion can happen on an export to PDF from the page layout, or from the printer’s RIP.

 

There are a number of problems editing in a CMYK space. The black generation, gray component replacement, gray balance, and total ink amount required by specific press conditions are built into a CMYK profile—all of which could be ruined with color corrections after the conversion to CMYK. Also, layer adjustments and Blending modes don’t work well in CMYK—it can be easy to exceed total ink limits when blending colors.

Earth Oliver
Legend
October 3, 2019
Yes and if you don't know everything about the printer/paper/profile, then making an educated guess about the separation can lead to very poor results on press.
rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 3, 2019
The CMYK profile profiles the press conditions. If you want to make your own conversions it would just be a matter of asking the printer for their CMYK profile.
D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 3, 2019

Print means a lot of things. For most people it means inkjet printers, and printer profiles for inkjets are RGB profiles. They expect RGB data. Conversion to actual inks (usually more than 4) is done inside the printer driver.

 

CMYK is for commercial offset print, which relatively few people ever get in touch with.

Legend
October 3, 2019
Many commercial printers now prefer and expect RGB from their clients. Because that allows them to apply CMYK at the last minute, with correct conditions, rather than getting vague and generic CMYK numbers.
Earth Oliver
Legend
October 3, 2019
Guess I need to find new vendors, never have had a vendor ask for RGB over CMYK. If you covent a RBG to CMYK you get a lot of color shift.
while that may be true, many print vendors have a very specific ink density which they print with and if you don't know the recipe, your results will be worse than theirs when doing a 4c conversion. Most of the time, the rgb-cmyk conversion happens at the RIP level and will produce superior results vs manually separating in Ps.