Working with CMYK

TonyCooper

My daughter, who does not have Photoshop, would like to have some of her photographs printed as postcards. I found a company who prints them, but they want the photos submitted in CMYK. I'll be doing the post for her.

I work a lot in CS4, but in RGB. From RAW file to processed CMYK, what steps are recommended? Do I do the post the same way as I would any other file?

arodney

First thing first is getting the correct recipe for the CMYK conversions (see http://www.ppmag.com/reviews/200703_rodneycm.pdf). Hopefully the shop doing the print work can supply this but that’s not always the case.

BinaryFx

Moving on from Andrew's post.

The next step after you know what type of CMYK is required, will be to softproof your RGB files to destination CMYK space - to see what is likely to happen to your original files (such as are source blue hues "out of gamut" for this CMYK and or do they turn to purple or whatever).

Converting from RGB to CMYK is not always as simple as hitting the convert to profile button and selecting a known destination profile and conversion options (what works for one image may not work for another).


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

EOS_JD

Are there no labs in your area that do this with RGB? It's rare these days that a lab asks for CMYK. Even if that's what they need, they may be better able to do the conversion.

TonyCooper

EOS_JD wrote:

Are there no labs in your area that do this with RGB? It's rare these days that a lab asks for CMYK. Even if that's what they need, they may be better able to do the conversion.

This is printing a photograph on postcard stock with a coated finish. My daughter has orders from area motels for some very local scenes.

The company I found requires submissions in CMYK.


I placed a trial order just to see how the come out. They haven't come in yet.