CMYK and Bitmaps

Hi,
I've been searching and reading up on CMYK, but still have a problem - photos. I've been doing a prospectus for my wife's school and the Printers don't like it. they don't want a TIFF they want ai. We can't run to buying Adobe Illustrator. I've tried exporting as an .ai and as an .eps. The Printers are moaning that the text isn't truly black, and that the pictures are dull, well CMYK seems to do that to pictures. Is there any way to keep the colour in photos when you're having to work in CMYK?
Cheers
Fraser

Any you are not able to resave your CMYK picture to RGB color space?

Nope, the printers want CMYK.

I would get a different printer. They seem to be missing some crucial customer service skills. Unwilling to go the extra mile for their customers. I'm sure you could find a printer willing to work with you or at the very least help you solve your problem.

black text: select your text, click the color editor, select cmyk, set cmy values to 0, only k to 100% or 255.

however, it might be that they use a digital printing process - which they should tell you. then they can give you the 'correct' values for black, which is called 'built black' and could have values like i.e.

C- 40%
M- 20%
Y- 5%
K- 100%

these values depend on the equipment they use for the digital printing...

and if they don't know what you are talking about, check for another printer, really.

Thanks guys,
A lot of the problem is communication - they don't speak English, I don't speak Czech, and my liason with them who does, isn't a graphics person...but she, and I, are learning fast. I'll find out how they do their blacks.

I grew up with bits of paper, key lines and hand it over to the print room for separations! Didn't realise how easy it was then...if painfully slow.

This just leaves the photos! How can I get them to look better in CMYK? Any ideas?
Regards
Fraser

Fraser,

Quote:

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This just leaves the photos! How can I get them to look better in CMYK?

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Well, that's a tiny problem with xtreme (or x1). It doesn't support CMYK separation or printing.

Solutions are:

01. generate a TIFF @ 300 or even 600 dpi. The printer can run it through a RIP (Raster Image Processor) to get CMYK films or printing plates. Any lousy RIP can do this (and every printer has to have a RIP).

02. export your drawing as a TIFF with the CMYK (32bit) color option checked/enabled - this will put you in control.

03. install a Linotronic driver and print your drawing to a file with the extent *.eps (install the driver so that it connects to the port 'file' instead of an existing port). The printer will run it through the RIP etc.

This procedure is different than the export as EPS! and has the advantage that all fonts will be converted to lines, so you won't run into the annoying font trap. You can use GhostScript with GSView to check your results.

04. In the Xara Xone there is a freeware converter RGB to CMYK. Convert your TIFF with this tool and import it into xtreme. The colors **will** look different! However, this ensures that the RIP won't modify the colors. Again, this puts you in control of the process (ok, to be honest, this is far from being a standard, but it works).

05. Purchase Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional and print your drawing to a PDF. With Acro 7 you can generate CMYK separations.

06. Purchase Macromedia Freehand. Design your vector works in Xara, export them via *.eps and import the objects into Freehand. As long as you don't have bevel or shadow or whatever effect, this is a smooth process. Be warned that Freehand messes up if the file size of the imported object is too large. You can download a 30 day evaluation copy from macromedia.com (unfortunately an Adobe product now).

My prefered method(s) to handle this stuff: # 03, #04, #02, #06.

Wow! Thanks Jens. I shall study what you've written, and give it some practice!
Thanks again
Fraser

You've covered everything Jens.

In XaraX I use crop marks that are CMYK. To get them to print on all CMYK plates they have to be 100% on each color - c,m,y & k. Relative to what Jens wrote above.

You can do this In Xtreme too. Select the item & change it to a CMYK color (using the sliders) or combo for mixed colors.

Hi
I own a professional printing and Graphic Design Company.
This printing company you are using sounds useless, most printing shops accept
Adobe, Corel Files, and most printing companys prefer PDF, which we find corelDRAW does this best, as Adobe Acrobat is expensive for the home user.
Regarding CYMK photos, that is wrong all photos should be printed in RGB.
We print on our wide format printers all graphics as CMYK and photos at 300dpi in RBG, and have perfect results every time, if you print your photos in CMYK they will loose colour and look washed out. we have a huge client base and print commerical banners and prints, my advice find a new printing company.

Well, appears to me you are one of the few savvy printers who know how to manage a RIP and the rest of his tools.

Hello raccoon2.
Quote "We print on our wide format printers all graphics as CMYK and photos at 300dpi in RBG, and have perfect results every time".

I am puzzled - RGB and CMYK color space being used as the input at the same time!
What file format do you ask for so that you can do that?
Thanks
Harry

If you deliver your work as a PDF file, then you have complete control over what colours are used and can include both RGB and CMYK in the same file.

Bitmaps will be RGB and should retain their brightness (their RIP will do the separation of that). And then for coloured objects and text you can define them to be whatever RGB or CMYK colour you require. And defining 'black' to have some cyan and magenta values as well as 100% black, will give a very rich deep black, as Jens says.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charles Moir

If you deliver your work as a PDF file, then you have complete control over what colours are used and can include both RGB and CMYK in the same file.

Bitmaps will be RGB and should retain their brightness (their RIP will do the separation of that). And then for coloured objects and text you can define them to be whatever RGB or CMYK colour you require. And defining 'black' to have some cyan and magenta values as well as 100% black, will give a very rich deep black, as Jens says.

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Thanks for your reply.
Yes, but doesn’t it boil down to the type of printing machine and its driver. If the machine is a CMYK only device, won’t the RGB photos in the PDF be printed at CMYK not RGB?
I appreciate if the machine has more inks available (such as Hexachrome) then RGB could be converted into the spectrum of the device through its driver.
At the end of the day it is the type of machine that decides how the RGB photographs are printed not the PDF file it receives. The point is, I suppose, that one should always check with the printer first to make sure that he can print them at RGB; his RIP has the necessary profile for RGB input and can accept Xara’s PDF export, otherwise he will be disappointed to find that they have been converted to CMYK.
In my experience the usual answer to that question is that the printer cannot/will not print photos at RGB.
Regards.
Harry

Well at some point the printing process will be converting RGB colours into CMYK inks, and so it's just a question at what stage this conversion occurs. All printers are CMYK devices - there's no such thing as RGB printer.

More and more printers are accepting general PDF files that contain CMYK and RGB data and just use the inherent separation capabilities of their RIP to convert any RGB data into CMYK.

(And if you think about it printing photos on your computer to your local inkjet is doing the same - it's converting your RGB data into CMYK. In this case the conversion is done by your printer driver)

On the other hand there is PDF/X which is a CMYK-only subset of PDF. PDF/X files must have all data converted to CMYK.

So yes you need to talk to your printer and find out what he expects. Often they will be happy to accept any PDF, but sometimes it may be PDF/X variant, in which case it will be necessary to use third party software, such as Adobe Acrobat 7 to produce the PDF/X file.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charles Moir

Well at some point the printing process will be converting RGB colours into CMYK inks, and so it's just a question at what stage this conversion occurs. All printers are CMYK devices - there's no such thing as RGB printer.

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Thanks again for your reply.
I fully understand that there are no RGB printers.
I would just add (finally) a selection of the replies I have had to my enquiry whether they could print a number of photos, contained in a brochure, as RGB. It was essential that the RGB photos of objects correctly showed their fidelity, or as near as possible. If left to the printer, without special treatment, they would be converted to CMYK and appear dull and washed out.

1. No. convert everything to CMYK. I have a CMYK only device. Let me have hard copy from your inkjet printer of all the photos and I will print near to it as best I can.
2. No. I have only the basic CMYK inkset. I have no extra inks to increase color fidelity.
3. No. but we offer Hexichrome.
4. No. But I will soon be able to do so, when I take possession of a new printer (Roland?).
5. Yes, My RIP has 2 profiles for RGB and 2 for CMYK. Convert all images and text to CMYK and leave the photos as RGB.

It is, therefore, no good just exporting bitmaps as RGB in a PDF and expecting a printer to deal with them as such, if he does not have the savy or a machine with an RGB profile to do that.

Regards
Harry

With todays digital printal services, most are willing to work with the customer.

The large format printers that use plates and sheets are a different story. They run the color mixes in layers to achieve the desired color and its a much more expensive process than small service printers. People that publish magazines or huge quantities of posters, use this type of plate/sheet method. Always a good idea to ask for a 'proof' in either method, but more important with plate/sheet printing.

Hopefully one day we will get away from spinning drums, rollers and multiple paint layers to achieve color.

Actually there is a way of converting everything to CMYK in Xara Xtreme. Simply export as a CMYK TIFF file. (The TIFF export dialog has a CMYK option). Export your document as very high resolution TIFF - at least 300 dpi, preferably 600dpi, and pretty much any printer should accept that file.

And yes it's good advice to always provide a printed proof to the printer from your inkjet or whatever, so he knows what you're trying to achieve.