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RGB or CYMK

justin24justin24 Registered Users Posts: 402 Major grins
edited December 10, 2009 in Finishing School
Ok so I finished processing my Ecuador photos and am working on my book now. Should I have saved the files as RGB or CYMK? Especially if they are going to be printed. I have printed photos before after a raw to jpeg (rgb) conversion and they looked really good, should I change it or stay with RGB?
www.justinschlesinger.com

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    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited December 10, 2009
    No one can answer that question without knowing your book. Also you need to make a distinction between your masters and your derivatives. I'll always keep my masters in RGB because it saves the most color info. Then save a copy to convert to CMYK since CMYK can't preserve all the colors.

    But then, you have to know whether you need CMYK. How is your book going to be printed. If it's direct digital (Blurb, Lulu, and so on) you want RGB. If it's going to press it's CMYK. If it's going to press but the conversion is downstream you might want RGB. See, you need to ask the people printing the book what their specific process needs. That's the only way to get the right answer.
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    justin24justin24 Registered Users Posts: 402 Major grins
    edited December 10, 2009
    I am looking at lulu. But I was was also looking at a print press. All my masters are RGB. I was wondering what you would go with. The book is going to be journalistic with writing of course and photographs from my trip to Ecuador.
    www.justinschlesinger.com
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    colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited December 10, 2009
    Lulu has the answer in their help system.
    http://www.lulu.com/en/help/rgb_vs_cmyk

    For a press, typically you would obtain the CMYK press profile from the printer and convert copies to that.
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