Won't convert to CMYK

Question

I'm editing photos for a book. They need to be CMYK only. I've done this many times before with Preflight and Photoshop. For some reason, Photoshop won't convert photos to CMYK, even after five or six tries. This applies to .psd, .jpg, .tiff and .png files.

I find the photo in Indesign open it with Photoshop, change mode to CMYK, save and close. But when I open it again from Indesign (or from the Links folder) it is still RGB. I've tried in both Photoshop 2021 and CS6. Every once in a while it works, but most of the time it doesn't.

I even tried doing a Batch process in Photoshop, still doesn't "take."

I've been doing this same process for years and it always worked before. Is it possibly because I'm still using Mac OS Mojave? What else can I try?

jane-e · Accepted Answer

What kind of CMYK are you converting to when you do it in Photoshop?

If you keep your images in RGB and export to PDF in InDesign, you can convert the images and choose which CMYK as you export. The images themselves remain RGB so you can export differently another time.

Read this post from @davidblatner on CreativePro.com. When he says he's been saying this for 15 years, note that he wrote it 6 years ago.

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

Also, the proper way to edit an image from InDesign is to right-click either the image or the link in the Links panel and choose Edit With... Then when you save and close the image file, the update is automatic.

~ Jane

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