May 24, 2019 When using our book-making tools, your RGB images are converted to CMYK at our printers. If you're using our PDF to Book workflow, you may want to consider submitting your files as CMYK. Our publishing guide has more information on color management for the PDF. PRINTING AND PUBLISHING INDUSTRY. & pub.-PRINTING AND PUBLISHING INDUSTRY: This designation includes occupations concerned with printing and publishing newspapers, periodicals, books, music, banknotes, bonds, blankbooks, maps, greeting cards, and other material, including designing, coloring, and related processes.
Hi,I've been using Quark 6.5 for years and have finally upgraded to 8.5 for Mac and need some help with Colour Management and PDF exporting. I use to save a postscript file using Adobes virtual printer from Quark and then distill using Acrobat but because of moving to Quark 8 and upgrading to Snow Leopard I've lost that ability. I've been looking around at the resources available to work out the best way of exporting CMYK jobs for Litho print from Quark as press quality PDFs similar to the Adobe standard and become a bit confused as there seems mixed feelings.
Firstly is Quarks built in export PDF function any good? In the past I was told it was the worst thing to use but now I've seen a lot of resources which seem to use it. Secondly, if I want to stick with a virtual printer how would I go about it?? I've read some resources which say you can still do it but not to let Acrobat Distiller embed any colour tags but I've always let it do this in the past without any issues, is this true?? In both cases whats the best practice for setting both up from start to finish (i.e.: all the Quark settings that need to be altered).
Another issue is the colour management side. I've read a lot on this too and I'm not quite sure where Quark 8 takes it's colour management settings from when it produces its PDFs?? WIth Adobe products it's very clearly laid out but Quark seems to have so many custom settings for colour that it has become a confusing subject as to what settings control the colour for the screen or for what imbeds into a PDF. Finally, AsIs or DeviceN?? I've always used DeviceN with Quark 6.5 but there seems to be mixed messages telling me it's not the right way to go if I want to keep the ICC profiles from the embedded images and not let Quark strip them out or replace them. Is this correct and if I use AsIs will this keep the existing ICC profiles for imported graphics but still embed a ICC profile for the native colours used in Quark 8??Sounds like a lot of questions but there seems to be so many varied answers that its hard to find a definative solution so I hope someone can help me.Thanks in advance.Alec. First of all, congrats for upgrading.For some years I was obliged to leave MacOS and to adopt Windows.
So, certain color management setting specific to Snow Leopard are unknown to me.Since Quark 6.5 a lot of things have changed in color management. First, I'd advise you to read the User guide, there's a chapter related to color management. From my experience, the resulting jobs made by XPress are as good as those made by Adobe softwares (and sometimes, even better).Check the Window menu, there is a palette (Profile Information) concerning the color profiles of the images placed in your layout. You can manage them quite well.Check also the settings in Edit Color Setups and try each available option to see what's happening (I'm not able to tell you step by step, 'cause I don't know how you're working).Check also View Proof Output to manage how colors are shown on your screen.The Export to PDF facility is very good.
Export some layouts, then open the resulting PDF files in Acrobat and apply a Preflight.You have two options in exporting to PDF (look in Edit Preferences Application PDF and choose the option appropriate to your needs: exporting directly to PDF, or creating a PS file (which can be later converted to PDF via Adobe Distiller).The AsIs or DeviceN options are related to the mode in which the process/spot colors are kept in the resuting file or during printing. You can realise what's all about exporting the same layout with different options, then opening the pdf's in Acrobat and examine them.I've tried to answer to (all?) your questions. If you need further explanations, please let us know (there are other members better than me on this forum). Thanks for the advice, it is a little vague, which I understand as you don't know my setup. I setup my PDFs generallu for CMYK output to Litho printers and need a generic setup using my calibrated monitor profile and profiles and profiles for the other elements using the standard Adobe Europe Prepress workflow.
As for AsIs and DeviceN, I'm still a bit confused as I basically want to make sure my embedded tags, which are in the graphics, are taken through in to the final PDF and not striped out and replaced and that the native Quark colours are embedded with the tags setup in Quarks colour management. I use to use DeviceN but comments from other users say AsIs is the actual one to use as it keeps the tags but I thought DeviceN did this to so am not sure who is right.
Most of my images are CMYK and in rare ocassion I do the odd 2 colour spot job but that is rare but would like to have either one setup which would work across the board or one for CMYK and one for spot colour.Is there anyone who could spread anymore light?Thanks.A. For a good output, the best thing is to have a word with your printer and to ask for their requirements. I've learned that each printer has his own rules.If you need to maintain the color profiles of your pictures, you can also turn off color management in QXPress. But this depends also on how you're making the final pdf's (exporting from QXPRess, or printing to a ps file then distill it), because of the different steps for setting the preferences (only in QXPRess or both in QXP and Adobe Distiller).The 'AsIs' option can preserve the percentages of the colors (process and/or spot) with accuracy.As I said in my precedent answer, you might want to try to make pdf's using different settings, then open each pdf in Acrobat Professional (I assume you have it if you're working for print) and examine them for fitting to your needs. This is the very best method of learning.HTH.
Alecchin wrote:Hi,I've been using Quark 6.5 for years and have finally upgraded to 8.5 for Mac and need some help with Colour Management and PDF exporting. I use to save a postscript file using Adobes virtual printer from Quark and then distill using Acrobat but because of moving to Quark 8 and upgrading to Snow Leopard I've lost that ability. I've been looking around at the resources available to work out the best way of exporting CMYK jobs for Litho print from Quark as press quality PDFs similar to the Adobe standard and become a bit confused as there seems mixed feelings. Firstly is Quarks built in export PDF function any good? In the past I was told it was the worst thing to use but now I've seen a lot of resources which seem to use it.
Secondly, if I want to stick with a virtual printer how would I go about it?? I've read some resources which say you can still do it but not to let Acrobat Distiller embed any colour tags but I've always let it do this in the past without any issues, is this true?? In both cases whats the best practice for setting both up from start to finish (i.e.: all the Quark settings that need to be altered).
Another issue is the colour management side. I've read a lot on this too and I'm not quite sure where Quark 8 takes it's colour management settings from when it produces its PDFs?? WIth Adobe products it's very clearly laid out but Quark seems to have so many custom settings for colour that it has become a confusing subject as to what settings control the colour for the screen or for what imbeds into a PDF. Finally, AsIs or DeviceN??
I've always used DeviceN with Quark 6.5 but there seems to be mixed messages telling me it's not the right way to go if I want to keep the ICC profiles from the embedded images and not let Quark strip them out or replace them. Is this correct and if I use AsIs will this keep the existing ICC profiles for imported graphics but still embed a ICC profile for the native colours used in Quark 8??AlecQuark's built in Export to PDF is good in most cases, especially with version 8.1 and 8.5 it offers native transparency in PDFs. It does this by writing special code into the Postscript file called PDFMarks, which either JAWS (which is built into Quark) or Distiller will recognize and process when making a PDF. If you use Export but set Quark's Prefs to write a postscript for later Distilling (and you need to text Edit a Distiller Setting to allow Transparency) you can drag the postscript file over Distiller the old fashioned way. Distiller and JAWS handle some color management differently so its worthwhile knowing both methods.Quark 6 I'd recommend DeviceN but Quark7 & 8 I'd choose AsIs.
My reasoning is that AsIs with quark 6 used to give rgb Marks so it was a bit of a non starter for cmyk work. Quark7 tried to force everything to DeviceN and combined with an always on approach to color management it occasionally gave some weird results. AsIs and Quark8 still are a long way from perfect in my opinion but its the best one to start with, my main dislike is that PANTONEs end up as Lab in PDF's and PANTONEs in placed EPS end up as something else in PDFs, quite often in the same PDF!
If you use DeviceN (or as it's now called Composite CMYK and Spot) with quark 7 and 8 be aware that the cmyk is subject to the Quark Document's Color Management settings.Quark (6 7 or 8) can not pass ICC profiles through to PDF. Furthermore postscript does not support ICC profiles so unless there is a future workaround using PDFMarks (which technically I'm unable to even say would be possible or not) as soon as the workflow hits the postscript stage (which it does in the background of Export to PDF) they have to be stripped or actioned.
In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled between the representations of various devices, such as, monitors, TV screens, film printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.The primary goal of color management is to obtain a good match across color devices; for example, the colors of one frame of a video should appear the same on a computer, on a plasma TV screen, and as a printed poster. Color management helps to achieve the same appearance on all of these devices, provided the devices are capable of delivering the needed color intensities. With photography it is often critical that prints or online gallery appear how they were intended.
Color management cannot guarantee identical color reproduction, as this is rarely possible, but it can at least give more control over any changes which may occur.Parts of this technology are implemented in the (OS), helper libraries, the application, and devices. A cross-platform view of color management is the use of an ICC-compatible color management system. The (ICC) is an industry consortium that has defined:. An open standard for a Color Matching Module (CMM) at the OS level. for:. Devices, including devicelink-profiles that represent a complete color transformation from source device to target device. Working spaces, the color spaces in which color data is meant to be manipulatedThere are other approaches to color management besides using.
This is partly due to history and partly because of other needs than the ICC standard covers. The film and broadcasting industries make use of some of the same concepts, but they frequently rely on more limited boutique solutions.
The film industry, for instance, often uses to represent a complete color transformation for a specific RGB encoding. At the consumer level, color management currently applies more to still images than video, in which color management is still in its infancy. Contents.Overview. Characterize.
Every color-managed device requires a personalized table, or 'color profile,' which characterizes the color response of that particular device. Standardize.
Each color profile describes these colors relative to a standardized set of reference colors (the 'Profile Connection Space'). Translate. Color-managed software then uses these standardized profiles to translate color from one device to another.
This is usually performed by a color management module (CMM).Hardware Characterization. See also:To describe the behavior of various output devices, they must be compared (measured) in relation to a standard. Often a step called linearization is performed first, to undo the effect of that was done to get the most out of limited paths. Instruments used for measuring device colors include. As an intermediate result, the device is described in the form of scattered measurement data. The transformation of the scattered measurement data into a more regular form, usable by the application, is called profiling. Profiling is a complex process involving mathematics, intense computation, judgment, testing, and iteration.
After the profiling is finished, an idealized color description of the device is created. This description is called a profile.Calibration. Main article:Calibration is like characterization, except that it can include the adjustment of the device, as opposed to just the measurement of the device. Color management is sometimes sidestepped by calibrating devices to a common standard color space such as; when such calibration is done well enough, no color translations are needed to get all devices to handle colors consistently. This avoidance of the complexity of color management was one of the goals in the development of sRGB.Color profiles. A 3D view of two ICC profiles Embedding Image formats themselves (such as, and ) may contain embedded but are not required to do so by the image format.
The standard was created to bring various developers and manufacturers together. The ICC standard permits the exchange of output device characteristics and color spaces in the form of. This allows the embedding of color profiles into images as well as storing them in a database or a profile directory.Working spaces Working spaces, such as, or are color spaces that facilitate good results while editing. For instance, pixels with equal values of R,G,B should appear neutral. Using a large (gamut) working space will lead to, while using a small working space will lead to. This trade-off is a consideration for the critical image editor.Color transformation Color transformation, or color space conversion, is the transformation of the representation of a color from one to another. This calculation is required whenever data is exchanged inside a color-managed chain and carried out by a.
Transforming profiled color information to different output devices is achieved by referencing the profile data into a standard color space. It makes it easier to convert colors from one device to a selected standard color space and from that to the colors of another device. By ensuring that the reference color space covers the many possible colors that humans can see, this concept allows one to exchange colors between many different color output devices. Color transformations can be represented by two profiles (source profile and target profile) or by a devicelink profile.
In this process there are approximations involved which make sure that the image keeps its important color qualities and also gives an opportunity to control on how the colors are being changed. Profile connection space In the terminology of the, a translation between two color spaces can go through a profile connection space (PCS): Color Space 1 → PCS ( or ) → Color space 2; conversions into and out of the PCS are each specified by a profile. Gamut mapping In nearly every translation process, we have to deal with the fact that the color of different devices vary in range which makes an accurate reproduction impossible. They therefore need some rearrangement near the borders of the gamut.
Some colors must be shifted to the inside of the gamut, as they otherwise cannot be represented on the output device and would simply be clipped. This so-called gamut mismatch occurs for example, when we translate from the RGB color space with a wider gamut into the CMYK color space with a narrower gamut range. In this example, the dark highly saturated purplish-blue color of a typical computer monitor's 'blue' primary is impossible to print on paper with a typical printer. The nearest approximation within the printer's gamut will be much less saturated. Conversely, an inkjet printer's 'cyan' primary, a saturated mid-brightness blue, is outside the gamut of a typical computer monitor. The color management system can utilize various methods to achieve desired results and give experienced users control of the gamut mapping behavior.Rendering intent When the gamut of source color space exceeds that of the destination, saturated colors are liable to become (inaccurately represented), or more formally. The color management module can deal with this problem in several ways.
The ICC specification includes four different rendering intents, listed below. Before the actual rendering intent is carried out, one can temporarily simulate the rendering. It is a useful tool as it predicts the outcome of the colors and is available as an application in many color management systems:.
Absolute colorimetric:Absolute colorimetry and relative colorimetry actually use the same table but differ in the adjustment for the white point media. If the output device has a much larger gamut than the source profile, i.e., all the colors in the source can be represented in the output, using the absolute colorimetry rendering intent would ideally (ignoring noise, precision, etc.) give an exact output of the specified CIELAB values. Perceptually, the colors may appear incorrect, but instrument measurements of the resulting output would match the source. Colors outside of the proof print system's possible color are mapped to the boundary of the color gamut.Absolute colorimetry is useful to get an exact specified color (e.g., IBM blue), or to quantify the accuracy of mapping methods. Relative colorimetric:The goal in relative colorimetry is to be truthful to the specified color, with only a correction for the media.
Relative colorimetry is useful in proofing applications, since it can be used to get an idea of how a print on one device will appear on a different device. Media differences are the only thing that one really should adjust for, although some gamut mapping also needs to be applied. Usually this is done in a way where hue and lightness are maintained at the cost of reduced saturation.Relative colorimetric is the default rendering intent on most systems. Perceptual and Saturation:The perceptual and saturation intents are where the results really depend upon the profile maker. This is even how some of the competitors in this market differentiate themselves. These intents should be created by the profile maker so that pleasing images occur with the perceptual intent while eye-catching business graphics occur with the saturation intent. This is achieved through the use of different perceptual remaps of the data as well as different gamut mapping methods.Perceptual rendering is recommended for color separation.In practice, photographers almost always use relative or perceptual intent, as for natural images, absolute causes, while saturation produces unnatural colors.
Relative intent handles out-of-gamut by clipping (burning) these colors to the edge of the gamut, leaving in-gamut colors unchanged, while perceptual intent smoothly moves out-of-gamut colors into gamut, preserving gradations, but distorts in-gamut colors in the process. This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Www.cambridgeincolour.com.
Fairchild, Mark. Retrieved 2008-05-09. Cite web requires website=. Overview of Color Management,Camberidge in Colour,2016.1.23.
Rodney, Andrew. Technical Paper. Retrieved 2008-05-09. Cite web requires website=. ^ Rodney, Andrew (2005). Color Management for Photographers.
Pp. 32–33. ^, Cambridge in Color. ICC Specification ICC.1:2010. Www.cambridgeincolour.com.
Upton, Steve (February 2008). Microsoft (1997-04-23). Retrieved 2008-05-08. Cite web requires website=. The reader may verify this by examining the Properties of any ICM profile. The Profile Information tab should contain the entry 'LinoColorCMM © by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG'. Smith, Colin; Kabili, Jan (2005).
Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Retrieved 2008-05-08. Many designers choose not to include ICC Profiles with Web files because most Web browsers can't read them and they increase the size of a file. by Sean Hayes. The value gfx.colormanagement.enabled can be set to 'true' in the ' file of Firefox since version 3.
2008-05-01 at the, Deb Richardson, Mozilla Corporation. Bugs.chromium.org.
Opera Changelog 12.10 stable. 4 October 2012.Further reading.
Fraser, Bruce; Bunting, Fred; Murphy, Chris (2004). Real World Color Management. Berkeley, CA, USA: Peachpit Press. Giorgianni, Edward J.; Madden, Thomas E.
Digital Color Management. Addison-Wesley. Swartz, Charles S. Understanding Digital Cinema: A Professional Handbook.
Focal Press. Morovic, Jan (2008). Color Gamut Mapping. Wiley.External links. by Norman Koren. by Steve Upton. by Light Illusion.
Open source ICC profile creator by Andrew Stawowczyk Long. 2012 Siggraph report from the Visual Effects Society.
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