I would ask your question in the color management forum. there seems to be numerous press experts there.I work for a paper and can tell you that whatever mood the pressmen are in can greatly affect your photos from week to week. they may run black too heavy or whatever,but it could be the info you are sending them. what are you set at under working space gray,under color settings? your midtones are the middle slider on the levels. also working under subdued lighting can help you see your adjustments much better. you could always post a sample greyscale shot here you did to show what you are ending up with. use pixentral if you are so inclined.
Rhonda,
It sounds like you’re printing grayscale to newsprint. In addition to your endpoint dot recommendations, what Grayscale Dot Gain numbers do the prepress folks suggest? And what are you currently using? If your images are consistantly too dark, it points to your dot gain being too low. Newsprint is typically 25-35 percent, but they should know what works there. You need to have a couple of things in order to make accurate on screen adjustments – the recommended dot gain for that grayscale space and a well calibrated monitor. If you have both of those, a simple Curvesor Levels Adjustment will adjust the midtones.
For the color images, you really need to have a good ICC profile and a calibrated screen. Newsprint is notoriously difficult to print well on, but you really want to make sure that whatever you do that you use a skeleton black plate with the color separation. Because so much of newsprint IS black and white, the press operators tend to push the black densities to get the type as black as possible. When you have a heavy black plate, the image will automatically get too dark as the pressmen push the blacks. A lighter black plate will allow them to do that with minimal effect on your image.
How are you converting your color images for the newsprint? – what settings, profiles, etc?
we are using swop newsprint 30%, GCR, Medium. Gray dot gain 30% and spot dot gain 30%. Profile is working gray dot gain 30% or cmyk swop, newsprint 30%. We do covert color images to cmyk. I try to edit in RGB, then I convert to grayscale or cmyk.
Okay, it seems that you’re using Custom CMYK and just choosing the Newsprint default. If your images are consitantly printing too dark, then try bumping the dot gain up to 35 percent. Also change the black generation to GCR Light and reduce the Black limit to 90 percent. The default Total Ink for that setup is 300 percent, which is far too high for newsprint. Reduced that to 240 percent. Now see what happens. This won’t be as good a making an actual custom CMYK profile with a modern application like ProfileMaker but it should be closer. If you had been using 300 percent Total Ink, I would try reducing that to 240 percent first, before changing your dot gain settings. If your ink limits were already lower, then do change the dot gain.
The thing I mentioned in my first post – the weight of the black generation – in your current setup will almost certainly cause problems. That’s why you should change to the lighter black generation. You can do conversions both ways and look at the black channels of both images and really see the differences, and then imagine what will happen to the image when the pressman pushes the black densities.
You should be aware that so much has changed in printing since that old CMYK Setup was written that’s it’s a miracle it works at all. The biggest problem is that the Ink Definitions in the defaults do not correspond very well to the actual inks being run on presses today, so you’re starting off with one hand tied behind your back.
I will certainly give your suggestions a try. I’ll let you know what happens. Thanks so much for the help. I can always rely on this forum for help!
I hate to sound dumb but I can’t figure out how to make those changes. The current settings I use were actually set up and emailed to me. I loaded them in my profiles. I can’t find the GCR light, and I don’t see where there is a 35%. Do you mind giving me some directions?
Go to your Color Settings dialog box. Under CMYK working space, click the dropdown menu button and navigate UP to the option called Custom CMYK. There you will find all the options. After you click OK, that will be your new CMYK color space, which, you can now go back into the dropdown menu and click Save CMYK to save it as a rudimentary ICC profile that you can access from Convert to Profile as needed.
The best option is still going to have someone make a custom CMYK ICC profile for your press operation, based on how your newpaper is actually printed, but hopefully this will get you closer.
Ok. I think I’ve set up the settings. Normally I have to open a picture, open levels and I lighten the photo there. Do you think I still need to do this?
Peter, as i understand it, you send a certain set of cmyk data to the press,and then read what went in verses what came out ,that is how you create a profile? is that the right way to do it? if so,how do you know which cmyk to output to begin with, and how does that work when your pressmen can crank up any one of the colors as he is printing?
Peter, don’t I need to synchronize the color settings with InDesign since I use ID for my page layout?
I’m running into problems. When I try to distill my pages I get this error %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: setdistillerparams; ErrorInfo: CalCMYKProfile ]%% %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% Error accessing color profile:
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
"Peter, as i understand it, you send a certain set of cmyk data to the press,and then read what went in verses what came out ,that is how you create a profile? is that the right way to do it? if so,how do you know which cmyk to output to begin with, and how does that work when your pressmen can crank up any one of the colors as he is printing? "
When I make CMYK profiles I send a standardized target that comes with ProfileMaker – usually the ECI2002 target that has, and I’m going from memory, about 1700 color patches of different CMYK mixes. You print that and then read those patches with a spectrophotometer, which give you Lab and Spectral data, which is then imported into the profiling application. There, you choose all the parameters to generate your profile, including total ink, black generation, how far the black will go into the midtone or highlights, etc. The application "knows" the values of what you sent out, and uses the difference in what it gets back to generate the profile.
"Ok. I think I’ve set up the settings. Normally I have to open a picture, open levels and I lighten the photo there. Do you think I still need to do this? "
I forgot to ask in the very beginning how your screens have been calibrated. Also, were you able to determine what the total ink limit of the setup you had been given was? If you had always made a levels adjustment as a matter of course, and you’re now making a change in the way you’re converting, I would try one thing at a time. Can you send me that setup?
"Peter, don’t I need to synchronize the color settings with InDesign since I use ID for my page layout? "
You can, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.
"I’m running into problems. When I try to distill my pages I get this error %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: setdistillerparams; ErrorInfo: CalCMYKProfile ]%% %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% Error accessing color profile:
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %% "
Are you making PDF-X1/a documents? If so, what are all your job settings? This could be crucial, especially if you didn’t go through them and make sure you weren’t automatically converting the color every time you made a pdf. That could make everything we’ve gone through to this point moot, and could explain a lot.
You do have to have embedded profile for X1a pdf’s and you need to specify an output destination profile too. That may be part of the problem.
I’m not sure what the ink limit was. My screen is calibrated with Adobe Gamma. I use levels to lighten the photos. I find if I wash them out, then the press guy (sometimes) gets it right. I figured out how to get my pages to pdf. What I do is make an eps, then I distill to pdf. I set my color settings in ID to the same profiles we set up in PS. I also added those same settings to by Distiller folder. Now all color settings are set at:
swop newsprint, 35% gcr light. Is there any way I can email the settings to you? Not sure how to attach them here
Click on my name. There will be a link to my website, which has email info, or maybe my email is right there after you click on my name. Not sure.
I sent several pages to press using the new settings and my press guys says it makes the pages too gray. Got any other ideas?
I’ll take a quick look. Can you put one of the CMYK images on a server, or email it to me? mike (a) curvemeister.com
Rhonda,
I sent you back new versions of your images. They were extremely flat both the color and the black and white. They’re fairly easy to fix, but it depends on how much time you can afford each image. The main problem is that there is no convincing black or white point. The first step in image correction should almost always to be to set your end points. Newsprint is a special problem since is has such a limited dynamic range to begin with – you have to do everything possible to maximize the contrast when the ink hits the paper. This often means being willing to throw out information that would easily print on better presses and papers on both ends of the tonal scale. It also means not being afraid to push the saturation of color images, as color images with more saturation almost always are perceived as "better" than those with less saturation especially when considering the newsprint factor.
I also sent Rhonda a ProfileMaker target which, hopefully, the pressman will put on the press. I’ll measure it and see how that compares to Photoshop’s Custom CMYK. That will be quite informative.
In addition, Rhonda told me they’re currently using Adobe Gamma on their LCD screens. That may be part of the problem in seeing an accurate image on screen and hopefully there’s an iOne on the way soon.
Peter
