RGB to CMYK basic conversions in Photoshop

One of the biggest issues with files supplied by graphic designers today is inconsistency in color separations. Since the advent of digital photography, clients routinely submit files with color all over the spectrum. Here are some simple tips to improve your results and give your printer a fighting chance to produce a consistent job. Please understand that there is no substitute for working with a professional color separator at your trade shop or printer. The below guidelines are for you to use when your budget or time line do not allow for involving a color professional or the color requirements of the job are not critical.

Adjust the levels of RGB to get a full range image. The easiest way to do this is using the levels function in Photoshop. Notice the three triangles under the histogram. Holding down the option key, slide the highlight triangle to the left until you start seeing some white noise on the screen. Then holding down the option key move the shadow triangle to the right until you start seeing some black noise on the screen. Be careful not to move either too far, doing so will make color too clean and unnatural. A good rule of thumb is to back off each move slightly by moving the sliders back slightly before hitting OK. If your image is too bright move the middle gray arrow to the left slightly. This technique will optimize the color range of the shot. IT IS IMPORTANT to realize that this technique will help maximize the color purity and range of an image but will not make a horrific image better. It may even hurt. Your judgment is still required but this technique will serve as a starting point. Below you will find a before and after sample of an image.


Now you are ready to convert the image to CMYK. Most users simply go to the image menu, to mode and then CMYK. This is probably the most dangerous way to convert an image. Photoshop and Adobe have so many settings for color that it is difficult to know exactly what is happening when you do this. Fortunately, Adobe did provide an additional way to convert color spaces. Under the edit menu there is a function called convert to profile. This tool affords users the opportunity to convert files exactly as asked.

LCP uses two basic profiles and we would be happy to supply them to you. They should be placed in the following directory on your Macintosh: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Color/Profiles. For most jobs we use GRACoL2006_Coated1v2. Jobs that contain large gray or neutral areas, wood grains, metal objects, whites such as sinks or snow scenes generally print with less color variation when separated using a GCR profile. For these jobs we use a custom profile we call LCP_MaxK_340. In grey component replacement (GCR) the CMY values that add to grey all along the tone scale can be replaced with black ink. Grey component replacement only adds black to the CMY equivalent of what would have printed as a grey.

To convert in this fashion, first make certain that your Photoshop CMYK color setup is set to the target profile (either GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 or LCP_MaxK_340). To do this open the color settings from the edit window and make sure the working space CMYK is set to the target profile. Failure to do this will not have any effect on the end result but will not allow Photoshop to accurately report the CMYK values using its densitometer feature. If you are making color moves based on these readings it may cause your results to be undesirable. See the picture to the right for the color settings screen.

To complete the conversion process we are going to use the Convert to Profile function located at the bottom of the Edit Menu. There are a few things to understand here. Every file has a Source Profile. This is usually embedded in the image and should be left alone. You can change the Source Profile and affect your results but this will take much experimentation and is too much to try and explain here. The next section is where you assign the Destination Space. The profile you choose here should be either GRACoL2006_Coated1v2 or LCP_MaxK_340 depending on whether or not you are looking for a GCR separation that I explained earlier in this post. Finally there are the conversion options. These should be set as pictured below. Changing any of these setting will result in different results.


I cannot stress enough that the above information is a guide to help you provide consistent color among all of the images in your piece. Color is something that takes years of practice and experience and there really is no substitute for a professional color expert.

What does it mean to be an effective partner?

Merriam-Webster defines a partner as, a: one associated with another especially in an action :associate, colleague b: either of two persons who dance together, etc. In business I like the second part of this definition. Last evening I watched the Winter Olympic Ice Dancing finals and thought about all the work that these partners have put in for their 6-7 minutes on the ice. Effective business partnerships are much like these athletes, two parties working together to produce a result. In the dance, partners support each other in many ways, one might lead and the other follow, one may lift or carry but to do this the other jumps, in planning the dance there is collaboration and the sharing of ideas. Successful partners understand what each other's strengths and weaknesses are and work to utilize the strengths and minimize the weakness. When successful, the dance is a series of fluid movements resulting in an appealing and often awe-inspiring performance. Sound fairly simple? I don't think so. We often fail to realize that in order for the partners to achieve that near perfection on the ice, hours of dedication, trial and error, practice and failure was endured. If one partner does not put in the necessary effort the dance will fail. This all holds true with business as well. In my past roles as a technical manager one of my responsibilities was to present technology to customers. Each and every time, clients were amazed at the possibilities and left excited about moving forward. My job was complete. It was now up to the sales representative and the client to create the effective partnership. Of the numerous clients I met with, only a handful use the technology today. Why? The partnership was not effective. Either one partner or both lacked either the desire or ability to put in the necessary effort to succeed. My point is that effective business partnerships only work as a result of hard work, dedication and the desire for both the provider and their customer to support each other. Doing so will produce the fluidity of a perfect dance. So the next time you read about someone being a partner, ask yourself a few question. Am I willing to put in the effort to make the partnership succeed? Do I have the resources available to support an effective partnership? Can I count on my partner to provide the support I need and am I willing to support them in return? If you can say yes to these questions then an effective partnership can be within your reach, you may even have place on the podium.

Industry Changes since 1990

Nineteen years ago I took my first job as a designer. The year was 1990 and when I came in for my first day of work we took delivery of two shinny new Mac II fx computers. I still remember the cover of Macworld magazine displaying two F14 jets with the headline, “The Fastest Macs Ever.” Quark was version 1.x and we had hot wax machines on every light table. The studio manager/owner was a freak about typography and we meticulously created kerning pairs for every font we owned. For fun we would give each other font recognition tests. On a daily basis we begged to turn off the Compugraphic and say goodbye to setting galleys of type and layout pages completely on the Mac. For the first year, all we did was set the copy and leave holes for photos to be stripped in. We created very clean art boards that were sent to our local printer. That was the last we saw of the project until it was done. It was almost another year before we started outputting film and any graphics. We were on the bleeding edge. Running curve calibrations daily and pushing the printers to use our film. The agency gave me my start with the Mac and for that I’m very grateful.

From there I went to work for a prepress house and was introduced to Scitex. How cool it was to build complete pages, output color-separated film complete with traps in imposed flats. A 16-page letter sized book might of taken two plus days to complete. Typical rates for the work were $300.00 an hour. A Scitex workstation that could process both color corrections and assemble pages ran well over $300,000.00. We were bursting at the seams with work and there were no arguments about cost or the time it took to complete the job. Clients would wait days to see proofs and there were very few alterations. Color was looked at and approved prior to final pages being submitted. Agencies were paid for their design and film houses and printers for everything they did.

Since that time personal desktop computers have continued to evolve, office secretaries have become designers and the art of typography has all but vanished. Agencies have carved their niche and remain vital to successful campaigns and collateral. There are only a handful of separation houses, which have either successfully maintained clients through data management or have been swallowed whole by wide-eyed printers who saw an opportunity to capitalize on another revenue stream. Increasing the work on their high priced production presses. I had a choice to make. Do I go back to the design side or join a print shop that realizes the value of prepress? I choose the later and took my knowledge of production and design to a startup printer in need of my skills. I quickly created efficient systems for production and worked daily with the agencies that were creating files. Automatic Picture Replacement (APR) was the Scitex version of OPI and we worked with our customers to utilize PSImages to allow for automated swap out of images. It was a big deal. No desktop computer could handle working with high res files and we needed a way to speed up production processes and push work through the shop. Overtime was a given and people worked routine 60-70 hour weeks. A few years into that job we purchased two Macintosh Quadra 900’s and started using Photoshop for color correction. Each machine was equipped with a whopping 256 meg of ram and with all the software and Barco Monitors cost $32,000.00. It would only be a few more years and the work would begin to slow.

Technology continued to change for the next several years and computer systems and software began putting more and more control into the hands of the designer. We saw a huge decrease in the quality of the work. Color consistency and printability was and still is a huge issue. Digital photography has made everyone his or her own photographer. To be competitive sales people had to start promising anything they could to get the job. The profits of commercial printers started to decline and the work became a commodity. There needed to be a reason someone would be awarded the print. The days of quality work have been swept aside and it became a culture of delivering proofs the next day.

As you can see, I have seen quite a change in an industry that today still continues to change. I began to ask myself what the next change was going to be and I looked deep into my experiences and decided it was the right time to leave the production side of print and join the world of sales. Today, technology continues to progress and the ability for designers to build quality files is within reach. Automation available in today’s prepress systems has put tools into the clients’ hands that have never been available. Savvy clients will adopt these technologies and as a result control their costs and budgets and increase profits for their firms. Printers will be forced to provide these technologies to win work and fill their capacity. So the question becomes who will deliver these technologies and provide the necessary training to take full advantage of them. Add-on the ability to intelligently discuss web-to-print technology, targeted marketing, and print on demand and the answer has to be someone who has been involved in the production of it and is a not only your sales representative but your go to person. Someone who will give you the answers they can and if they can’t get them for you and then teach you what to do next.

Our economic environment has created difficulty for all of us. Those who succeed will need to reinvent what they do and deliver new products and services. I for one will be on that side of the equation. Why not join me?