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Problems with colours after creating a CMYK file from an RGB file

New Here ,
Apr 09, 2022 Apr 09, 2022

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Hello, wondering if someone can help me, I am out of my depth! 

 

I scanned in art work and made some art prints which I print as required at home. They are RGB files. They printed out fine.  I recently had some greetings cards made, I copied parts of my artwork in to a new file which I then converted to CMYK, as required by the card printing company. The cards came back from the print company looking good.

 

However....I've just discovered the original RGB art print files now look terrible, the colours are dull and way off.  Photos attached. I've checked the colour profiles, but can't see any obvious solution, I don't really know what I'm doing. I've managed to rescue one or two by extracting the relevant layer from my greeting card design and making a new art print file out of it, but it's not ideal from a DPI point of view. And it won't work for all of them.  Thanks in anticipation!

 

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Adobe
Community Expert ,
Apr 09, 2022 Apr 09, 2022

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You need to watch your color profiles. It appears your second example is untagged (it doesn't have an embedded profile at all). If this was converted back from CMYK, you have lost a lot of color information, and what's left is undefined.

 

Always keep a master file in a known RGB color space, like e.g. Adobe RGB. Then save out copies as needed - like sRGB for web, or a CMYK profile to send out for print as requested.

 

There is no such thing as just "RGB" or "CMYK". Those are generic color models. Color spaces are sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto, US Web Coated (SWOP), ISO Coated (eci) and so on and so on. You need to keep track of them, you can't ignore it. Photoshop is built around this.

 

Your color settings should be left at defaults. The working space isn't important, that's just a fallback default. The embedded color profile will always override your color settings. That's what you need to watch:

notification_2.png

 

 

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New Here ,
Apr 10, 2022 Apr 10, 2022

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Thank you that's really helpful, I didn't know about embedded profiles. I am just looking in to that and trying to understand... is going to Edit -Assign Profile the right way to embed a profile? 

 

You say leave the Colour Settings at defaults - so is it ok if the Working Space profile that is in the Colour Settings does not match the assigned/embedded profile? Thanks for bearing with my ignorance!!

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LEGEND ,
Apr 09, 2022 Apr 09, 2022

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Can you zip and upload the RGB document that's causing you issues to something like Dropbox or similar so we can check it out?

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

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New Here ,
Apr 10, 2022 Apr 10, 2022

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Thank you, it's really kind of you to offer to take a look. I think this link should work:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8q2ry67r43h0rk/Thank%20You%20a4.psd?dl=0

 

Grateful for any insight you can offer which might help me get the colours back as they were!

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LEGEND ,
Apr 10, 2022 Apr 10, 2022

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Indeed, as D Fosse found, there is no embedded ICC profile. So how it appears is iffy depending on your color settings. When I assign Adobe RGB (1998) it looks good to me, saturated but this is subjective due to the nature of this image.

Go into Photoshop's Assign Profile command and try sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998) then assign the profile you visually prefer. Always work with tagged images!

For more info see:

See: http://digitaldog.net/files/PhotoshopColorSettings.mp4

Photoshop CC Color Settings and Assign/Convert to Profile video

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

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