Vivid colors in Photoshop

[Agni75]

Hello,

I am designing a book using iPad and Photoshop and now I would like to add colour to illustrations. 

I have heard that if the book is to be printed I can only use CMYK colour mode. 
When I try colours are never vivid and bright but dull and do not look like I would like them to be. When I look at books for children available in bookshops many of them have beautiful bright colours. 

I would appreciate some guidance.

[josantgomez]

Desconozco el concepto brillante en color. Pero sí se que es el contraste de color. Y la relación entre colores primarios y complementarios y, al menos intuitivamente, comprender su relación con lo antedicho. La gestión de color necesita bastante espacio para explicarla, y seguramente por ello, a lo mejor te escasean las respuestas. Propongo , sin aconsejar , que leas lo que puedas en relación con lo expuesto. Después, tu mismo, con las variables que te ofrecen las potentes herramientas que para ello tienen Photoshop o Camera Raw (supongo ambos utilizables en tu Ipad),  probarás y encontrarás resultados que satisfagan.  Cuando voy paseando o examino fotos me pregunto cuál es la razón de que me llamen la atenció o dónde radica su fuerza. La observación es otro instrumento que, modestamente, a mi me ha resultado útil. Leyendo verás también que los colores tiene diferentes longitudes de onda y eso determina que unos vean antes que otros. Para mejor, o para peor, como suele ocurrir con el magenta.

[D Fosse]

..

[Agni75]

Thank you very much for your exhaustive answer. 

[jane-e]

@Agni75 

Read this article from Creative Pro:

https://creativepro.com/import-rgb-images-indesign-convert-cmyk-export/

Note that it was written 10 years ago, so when they say "we’ve been saying this for 15 years", it's been 25.

Jane

[D Fosse]

CMYK is based on real world offset printing processes. A CMYK profile is a representation of actual physical inks on certain paper stock, on an offset press calibrated to a certain standard. That's the limitation in color (the profile's color gamut). It's a hard limit, a brick wall, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So this has nothing to do with Photoshop, it's the physical properties of printing inks, paper and and offset presses.

But you make an interesting remark which is a good example of perception psychology. The eye and brain are very good at adapting to the conditions and environment. So you perceive it as "colorful" even with these limitations. When you prepare your own work you sort of disengage this adaptation, and as a result you're much more critical.

There's a very important consideration in this: good color is not about absolute saturation. Good color is about color relationships.

It's crucial that you use the correct CMYK profile when you prepare your work! You need to ask the printer, there is no way around that. It has to be the one that represents the actual printing process used. There are some regional common practices for this, but standards vary widely around the world. The Photoshop default CMYK is not used and not valid in most parts of the world.

[D Fosse]

Just a little comment to the (excellent) article Jane links to: Yes, it pays to prepare your master files as RGB, and then convert to CMYK as it goes to press. This is for flexibility and allows repurposing for different printing conditions (such as offset vs inkjet and so on). However, if it is going to offset press, you need to deal with the gamut clipping that will most certainly happen.

To do this, while working in RGB, you can soft proof to the appropriate CMYK profile. But again, you need to know which one.

[Agni75]

Thank you very much for that fast response. 

I will have to work out how to set up colour profile in Photoshop then as I haven't figured it out yet. I was able to design my youtube banner with the aid of tutorials but haven't found any good tutorial regarding colour set up yet. 

I thought it was crucial to ask the printer thank you for a reminder here.  I am designing for Kindle Press Amazon US so I believe CMYK Photoshop will be valid but I will have to double check if it is not already in the guidelines. 

[Stephen Marsh]

I am designing for Kindle Press Amazon US so I believe CMYK Photoshop will be valid but I will have to double check if it is not already in the guidelines. 

By @Agni75

Online print-on-demand and self-publishing print service providers are notorious for offering no useful information, or conflicting or inaccurate information. After wasting 10 minutes Googling on this I am not surprised to see that your chosen provider is on par with all the other usual suspects.

Assume nothing.

Talk to or email a CSR at your PSP.

[josantgomez]

Has resumido mi experiencia con impresores. Aún sigo esperando , después de días, el dpi que aplicarían a un archivo. Las demás preguntas que hice las tuve que resolver yo buscándome la vida. Has tenido una magnífica respuesta de la comunidad. 

He estado leyendo, a partir de tu publicación, sobre los colores brillantes. Esto he visto que se está estudiando por algunas universidades . No te mando enlace sobre ello porque es muy técnico y nada útil para nuestros propósitos. Es algo complejo e , incluso para los expertos, sin explicación satisfactoria en casos. Sin embargo , las propiedades de los colores es algo tras leerlo incrementará tus capacidades intuitivas y deductivas sobre el tema. Y esto sí pueder útil.

https://desarrolloweb.com/articulos/1503.php

[Stephen Marsh]

Assume nothing about the actual output until you know better.

Work in RGB until you know better. If you are going to add colour, you may also wish to do so in a separate layer, keeping any black linework separate in your working files.

With modern "late binding" workflows with a digital press, in theory you could possibly have a wider gamut output with greater saturation when sending an RGB file to the RIP/DFE driving the digital press. This is because the colour conversion to the press colour space happens last. That being said, 99% of commercial setups will likely use an intermediate "simulation" colour space where data is converted to a "standard" CMYK space for an offset press before being converted to the final digital press colour space. So even if the digital press has a larger gamut, the input data is most likely being dumbed down anyway and you will never see the benefit unless you have such a discussion with your print service provider.

[Agni75]

Thank you very much for the answer. One thing is striking for me : I have converted one of my illustrations colour profile from RGB to CMYK in Photoshop and the orange colour has not changed in the picture. I don't want to ask too many simple questions here, so I will go through the message board to look for answers. 

[davescm]

Converted from which specific RGB profile to which specific CMYK profile? What exact colour values was the 'orange' before converting? There are some colours that can be contained in both profiles.

Dave

[Conrad_C]

The colors that will change are the ones that can’t be reproduced by the combination of inks and paper that are used. But if a color can be reproduced by the inks and paper combination, then of course the color can stay the same.

There may be other factors affecting whether a color changes, such as the rendering intent that’s applied, but mostly it’s about whether a color exists within the color gamut that the inks and paper can reproduce.