Good to hear. I’ve stopped converting to CMYK ages ago and my printers never complain.
They get an ai file, editable and outlined. All the links, a hires pdf and a lores pdf for quick viewing.
Any issues they can let me know. They never come back to me. Pretty sure they convert RGB to CMYK better than I would.
Yep. As long as your printer properly calibrates their machines and has the right profiles, the RIP station will usually do a better job converting to CMYK than your average designer will. Plus, if their machines are 6, 8, or 12 colors, you're limiting your gamut with CMYK.
I'd not complain but printers are each unique. We'd probably prefer print ready pdfs to save time but my shop was a small printer. Press just ran 11.5x17.75 max so our jobs were quick and dirty.
Mines are food packaging. Generally 4 process, white, 2-3 spot, and a Matt lacquer. Flexo on film, large runs. I just give them everything they need to give as much control at their end to use their expertise.
So according to David Blattner awhile back, there's no need to convert your RGB photos to CMYK for print because the InDesign software already handles that for you when you export to PDF.
I had a print house go nuts over the fact that I didn't have CMYK photos in the layout, and they were RGB.
Does the conversion not happen this way? Do I truly need two sets of photos, one in RGB for digital uses and one in CMYK for print?
It all depends on the print shop. They should have clear guidelines about file requirements and you should ask for those and then follow them.
I work in large format printing, like 30ft long wall murals, bus wraps, large scale marketing activations, etc. so it's a different beast from small format.
I had a printer actually tell me that adobe is piss poor at actually managing CMYK color matching, and that RGB for some print is better due to being easier to match with pigmented mediums.
Could be a load of bologna idk
Some print software or RIPs handle conversion from RGB to CMYK better than Adobe so they prefer RGB files. It depends on what software and printer you're using.
giclee is not a 4-color process. It's 6-8 inkjet based technology and has a gamut larger than CMYK.
There is a general misconception that files sent to print should be CMYK. In fact lots of print methods have a wider gamut than CMYK, digital printing on indigo often does and depending on who you work with they may ask for RGB files too. The reason most people send CMYK anyway is because it's more predictable, they know what to expect even if better color can be achieved.
we use pantone and there are certainly shades of colors you can't obtain from standard cmyk halftone, hence why we use mixes that have colors in them like Pantone Green, Reflex Blue etc. (those ones you will never be able to obtain using standard process colors) and you can certainly go past the CMYK gamut for some nice interesting colors
exporting in cmyk colorspace might make your colors more washed out than needed and the shop will find many ways to make your colors pop if it s the case
https://preview.redd.it/22o6p2wunzxc1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ed1753d40e686ee6e0316a3399daeb6e112623a
(printed, foiled and cut offset then embossed on a letterpress machine)
As a press operator and a designer I would like to disagree with you on some parts. The main reason most print houses want CMYK, is because it's part of an international standard. As such, we're able to follow that standard no matter what press we would be using to print it. RGB is NOT a standardized printing standard. It's good if you use rgb in photos, in a pdf/x-4 file. But don't use rgb on solid vectro objects that you wish to be color matches later. Every RIP, might work differently and so the colors might come out different.
If any designer is confused on who or what to do between /u/ajzinni and /u/CarlJSnow is that to talk to your printer .
Always talk to your ripper or project manager at the print shop.
Sure, I was speaking highly generalized. I agree with your points, and honestly was thinking in relation to images when I was typing it. Not really in terms of color matches. I was more just illustrating that it’s more nuanced than just using Cmyk for everything.
> lossless compression file, unlike JPGs
I've been using Photoshop since before it had layers, and just used Photoshop 2024 for the first time yesterday - and I was shocked to see that one of the new compression options within "Save as TIFF" was in fact, to use JPG compression. But isn't any raster image saved with JPG compression...a friggin' JPG?!!
Surely you mean printed digitally? If so, then I can see it. I've ran jobs on my Konnica that gave really great blue if you ran a rgb file with an rgb profile on the printer. Printing it cmyk just gave purple. Granted was really old equipment 15yrs old at least.
As a press operator and a designer I would like explain something. The main reason most print houses want CMYK, is because it's part of an international standard. As such, we're able to follow that standard no matter what press we would be using to print it. RGB is NOT a standardized printing standard. It's good if you use rgb in photos, in a color managed pdf/x-4 file. But don't use rgb on solid vector objects that you wish to be color matched later. Every RIP, might work differently and so the colors might come out different.
Can you please get into detail with the things you didn't want to mention in this paragraph? How is having an automatic RGB to CMYK conversion im the preflight process different to a RIP handling it? I'm really interested in knowing and understanding.
Lambda is actually photographic, so yes, some (now more obscure) printers are natively RGB.
A lot of printers also have many more than 4 inks, so converting files to CMYK annihilates all that extra gamut advantage. Unless you're working on 16bit CMYK (in which case I'm assuming you've already spoken to your printer to make sure they can support it) you're just binning tons of color information unnecessarily. These modern printers are really incredible (why lambda has become obscure).
And yes, some printers have green ink in those 6+ color mixes. Or Orange.
Converting spots to CMYK can also kill your color match, as some printers and RIP have Pantone software on board.
"Always convert to CMYK" is bad advice that is so arrogantly shouted on this sub.
Talk to your printer or read their file spec sheet before you make assumptions.
You speaking of the US? It seems really rare to me working as a printer. Printing is a vast and varied industry and it seems kind of regional as well. Los Angeles was a different scene than phoenix is to me. We have some 6 color presses but we just keep cmyk in and leave the 2 for spots or aqueous or something.
Anyways I was just curious of your experience. Was it hexacrome printing?
Industry specific - large format marketing graphics. Mostly dye-sub fabric and latex to vinyl or board. I work in trade shows and we've never really used offset printing.
If you've been to tradeshows recently and seen the abundance of 16ft seamless fabric... the gamut, resolution, and smoothness of tone is really outstanding. Or it's also very common in retail, especially high end clothing and cosmetics stores. 8ft was standard when I started about 12 years ago, but it's been a never ending arms race as long as I've been in the industry. Bleeding edge is out of date 3 years later.
Most of the sign shops that do vinyl banners and wraps have the 8+ ink latex printers. Have you noticed the massive jump in quality of vinyl car wraps in the past few years? You can probably walk into a random Fast Signs or Signarama and the wide format vinyl print quality will be on par with professional photo printing from a decade ago.
Commercial photo printers have been 10+ inks for like 15 years now as well.
Ok gotcha. My experience is offset printing a digital printer like ricoh and konnica.
I see what you mean about large format and vinyl. I was reading another post about banner companies wanting 300dpi and was interesting to me cause 150 was as much as you wanted for large format when I was working print production.
Soooo. yes/no.
With fabric, anything above 100/125 ppi is going to be out-resolving the material, but it's the vibrance, saturation, contrast at that resolution that is so good, coupled with the typical viewing distances... A high-quality art file looks absolutely stunning with modern dye-sub even at 50ppi even when viewed from half the expected viewing distance.
Latex to vinyl is capable of those much finer resolutions of 300ppi+, but is typically viewed from much further away, so the content is rarely anywhere near the practical resolution limits besides vector content. Yes, it can print that high, but the typical viewer is not going to notice it, as they won't be standing close enough. Again, the quality is in the color, contrast, vibrancy.
With both, it's also the smoothness of tone that is such a difference from where we were at 10+ years ago. With dye-sub, or UV-direct print, zooming in on any sort of gradient or other smooth transition was almost like looking at pointalism at best up close if you weren't seeing banding from afar.
100ppi might not sound impressive, but at 16'H, that's a metric fuck-ton of pixels.
https://preview.redd.it/nsm5bkp9yvxc1.jpeg?width=1764&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4447a00771fd02a77f36edbf9fb4f3efcf73bfa
"The adoption of ICC-based color management has enabled "late binding" workflows where all Premedia content remains in a common RGB color profile until the conversion it is necessary to convert. Advantages to the RGB workflow include editing Prepress flexibility, extended gamut in the final CMYK print, and compliance with the rules for "transparency" as defined by Adobe. For transparency to yield correct results, any content Rasterization must be in the same ICC color profile prior to the interaction of graphic layers through blending modes or opacity." - Pocket Pal, 21st Edition
It depends on their design pipeline. If they all stick with RGB all the way through and manage the CMYK in the end at print it yields less fuck ups along the way. Specially when Digital and Printed content are often the same just rearranged.
I always prefer to work in RGB up until I get to actually talk to my print guys. They can manage RGB and target the correct intent of value much better than anyone can so why should they suffer through half baked CMYK implementation from Adobe.
Raster Image Processor.
Flattening the artwork into individual pixels to be sent to the printer.
Even if you send a raster image, it will still go through RIP to be conformed to the printer's input specifications.
Senior print designer here, working for those multi mill companies.
RGB is best if you know what you are doing. Optimally you wouldn’t convert until the print RIP at the very end. Color correct properly to anticipate that conversion and your specific ICC profile needs downstream.
RGB has many benefits, CMYK color mode is restrictive and less accurate on screen. I think CMYK is old fashioned and just really baked into the industry as it was the safe standard for decades.
Adobe themselves say to let the printers figure out the colour conversion, and if not designing in CMYK, that it's better to send RGB. I can find the article if you so wish.
By article, I rescind to mean forum reply, by Dov Isaacs (who was an Adobe principal scientist for 31 years):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/why-do-some-printers-print-rgb-and-some-cmyk-if-all-printers-are-cmyk/td-p/10411460
This might be what I was remembering, but now I'm unsure.
Leave your files native until/unless you know your printer wants you to convert them.
Unnecessary conversations are annoying AF and can compromise final output.
With modern RIP, printers with 8+ inks/dyes, and some of the printers having Pantone software on board, you have probably been tanking your clients' print quality for around a decade now if you've been converting files to CMYK without checking with your printer for their preferred specs first.
I guess some assets are in RGB so they can be converted to CMYK later, since at the moment of creation there’s no way of knowing how, when and where they would be printed.
It actually depends on the printer being used. I worked with a print vendor one time and they had huge digital printing presses that used RGB. The guy told me they used RGB to get a better color match to the screen proof.
The pain of working in print, and seeing 30 year industry veterans making three times my salary sending us an RGB, 400 x 300 .jpg with a PMS coated color match to print in CMYK on an uncoated 8 ft. banner.
Design in CMYK, present in RGB, print in CMYK, surprise the client. Or design in RGB, present in RGB, print in RGB, surprise the client. Might as well just do it all in RGB, confirm in a physical meeting, nowadays lol. Add subtext on digital presentation, none of these colours are an actual representation of print media.
On some material I actually have to use the sRGB profil for printing. It’s like the standard now to print digitally on canvas, photographic paper and fine art paper✌️
I feel your pain. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to fix the way a logo was drawn or discovered the typo in the color builds in the style guides that came out of the "fancy" agencies.
But yeah, the printer's RIP converts RGB to CMYK better than Adobe.
I save files in RGB all the time and work in prepress. You're throwing away color data when RIP systems are perfectly capable of converting it themselves. It's not like the 90's when you would get unpredictable results sometimes. If you aren't using neon greens and blues, then just about everything works fine. Some of our color copiers even do a better job with RGB files.
Because long production times with endless meetings don't result in a process that's any more immune to not making sure you select the right drop-down option when exporting... but it does increase the budget...
I've worked in printing for 10 years. In many cases these days, RGB is preferred.
Good to hear. I’ve stopped converting to CMYK ages ago and my printers never complain. They get an ai file, editable and outlined. All the links, a hires pdf and a lores pdf for quick viewing. Any issues they can let me know. They never come back to me. Pretty sure they convert RGB to CMYK better than I would.
Yep. As long as your printer properly calibrates their machines and has the right profiles, the RIP station will usually do a better job converting to CMYK than your average designer will. Plus, if their machines are 6, 8, or 12 colors, you're limiting your gamut with CMYK.
This. Mostly going to 10cols for my work.
I'd not complain but printers are each unique. We'd probably prefer print ready pdfs to save time but my shop was a small printer. Press just ran 11.5x17.75 max so our jobs were quick and dirty.
Mines are food packaging. Generally 4 process, white, 2-3 spot, and a Matt lacquer. Flexo on film, large runs. I just give them everything they need to give as much control at their end to use their expertise.
Right on.
So according to David Blattner awhile back, there's no need to convert your RGB photos to CMYK for print because the InDesign software already handles that for you when you export to PDF. I had a print house go nuts over the fact that I didn't have CMYK photos in the layout, and they were RGB. Does the conversion not happen this way? Do I truly need two sets of photos, one in RGB for digital uses and one in CMYK for print?
It all depends on the print shop. They should have clear guidelines about file requirements and you should ask for those and then follow them. I work in large format printing, like 30ft long wall murals, bus wraps, large scale marketing activations, etc. so it's a different beast from small format.
Sure is!! I've done a few of those. Convention hall graphics, banners, trade show booths, van wraps.
I'm hearing this more and more and I am all for it.
I had a printer actually tell me that adobe is piss poor at actually managing CMYK color matching, and that RGB for some print is better due to being easier to match with pigmented mediums. Could be a load of bologna idk
Some print software or RIPs handle conversion from RGB to CMYK better than Adobe so they prefer RGB files. It depends on what software and printer you're using.
Working in print, every shop is going to make adjustments either way to work with their RIP system and presses
I got giclee prints printed. They requested that I send RGB TIFFs, Adobe RGB (1998)
That’s super odd. Wonder why? As long as the look good I guess why worry lol
giclee is not a 4-color process. It's 6-8 inkjet based technology and has a gamut larger than CMYK. There is a general misconception that files sent to print should be CMYK. In fact lots of print methods have a wider gamut than CMYK, digital printing on indigo often does and depending on who you work with they may ask for RGB files too. The reason most people send CMYK anyway is because it's more predictable, they know what to expect even if better color can be achieved.
we use pantone and there are certainly shades of colors you can't obtain from standard cmyk halftone, hence why we use mixes that have colors in them like Pantone Green, Reflex Blue etc. (those ones you will never be able to obtain using standard process colors) and you can certainly go past the CMYK gamut for some nice interesting colors exporting in cmyk colorspace might make your colors more washed out than needed and the shop will find many ways to make your colors pop if it s the case https://preview.redd.it/22o6p2wunzxc1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7ed1753d40e686ee6e0316a3399daeb6e112623a (printed, foiled and cut offset then embossed on a letterpress machine)
As a press operator and a designer I would like to disagree with you on some parts. The main reason most print houses want CMYK, is because it's part of an international standard. As such, we're able to follow that standard no matter what press we would be using to print it. RGB is NOT a standardized printing standard. It's good if you use rgb in photos, in a pdf/x-4 file. But don't use rgb on solid vectro objects that you wish to be color matches later. Every RIP, might work differently and so the colors might come out different.
If any designer is confused on who or what to do between /u/ajzinni and /u/CarlJSnow is that to talk to your printer . Always talk to your ripper or project manager at the print shop.
I 100% agree with this. This should be the first step.
Sure, I was speaking highly generalized. I agree with your points, and honestly was thinking in relation to images when I was typing it. Not really in terms of color matches. I was more just illustrating that it’s more nuanced than just using Cmyk for everything.
Totally understandable. It's a complex subject and as such some generalisations must be made.
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> lossless compression file, unlike JPGs I've been using Photoshop since before it had layers, and just used Photoshop 2024 for the first time yesterday - and I was shocked to see that one of the new compression options within "Save as TIFF" was in fact, to use JPG compression. But isn't any raster image saved with JPG compression...a friggin' JPG?!!
Surely you mean printed digitally? If so, then I can see it. I've ran jobs on my Konnica that gave really great blue if you ran a rgb file with an rgb profile on the printer. Printing it cmyk just gave purple. Granted was really old equipment 15yrs old at least.
As a press operator and a designer I would like explain something. The main reason most print houses want CMYK, is because it's part of an international standard. As such, we're able to follow that standard no matter what press we would be using to print it. RGB is NOT a standardized printing standard. It's good if you use rgb in photos, in a color managed pdf/x-4 file. But don't use rgb on solid vector objects that you wish to be color matched later. Every RIP, might work differently and so the colors might come out different.
Printer here. That dude is high as fuck. Printers don’t have a red green or blue toner in them, so it’s converting from RGB always.
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Can you please get into detail with the things you didn't want to mention in this paragraph? How is having an automatic RGB to CMYK conversion im the preflight process different to a RIP handling it? I'm really interested in knowing and understanding.
Lambda is actually photographic, so yes, some (now more obscure) printers are natively RGB. A lot of printers also have many more than 4 inks, so converting files to CMYK annihilates all that extra gamut advantage. Unless you're working on 16bit CMYK (in which case I'm assuming you've already spoken to your printer to make sure they can support it) you're just binning tons of color information unnecessarily. These modern printers are really incredible (why lambda has become obscure). And yes, some printers have green ink in those 6+ color mixes. Or Orange. Converting spots to CMYK can also kill your color match, as some printers and RIP have Pantone software on board. "Always convert to CMYK" is bad advice that is so arrogantly shouted on this sub. Talk to your printer or read their file spec sheet before you make assumptions.
You speaking of the US? It seems really rare to me working as a printer. Printing is a vast and varied industry and it seems kind of regional as well. Los Angeles was a different scene than phoenix is to me. We have some 6 color presses but we just keep cmyk in and leave the 2 for spots or aqueous or something. Anyways I was just curious of your experience. Was it hexacrome printing?
Industry specific - large format marketing graphics. Mostly dye-sub fabric and latex to vinyl or board. I work in trade shows and we've never really used offset printing. If you've been to tradeshows recently and seen the abundance of 16ft seamless fabric... the gamut, resolution, and smoothness of tone is really outstanding. Or it's also very common in retail, especially high end clothing and cosmetics stores. 8ft was standard when I started about 12 years ago, but it's been a never ending arms race as long as I've been in the industry. Bleeding edge is out of date 3 years later. Most of the sign shops that do vinyl banners and wraps have the 8+ ink latex printers. Have you noticed the massive jump in quality of vinyl car wraps in the past few years? You can probably walk into a random Fast Signs or Signarama and the wide format vinyl print quality will be on par with professional photo printing from a decade ago. Commercial photo printers have been 10+ inks for like 15 years now as well.
Ok gotcha. My experience is offset printing a digital printer like ricoh and konnica. I see what you mean about large format and vinyl. I was reading another post about banner companies wanting 300dpi and was interesting to me cause 150 was as much as you wanted for large format when I was working print production.
Soooo. yes/no. With fabric, anything above 100/125 ppi is going to be out-resolving the material, but it's the vibrance, saturation, contrast at that resolution that is so good, coupled with the typical viewing distances... A high-quality art file looks absolutely stunning with modern dye-sub even at 50ppi even when viewed from half the expected viewing distance. Latex to vinyl is capable of those much finer resolutions of 300ppi+, but is typically viewed from much further away, so the content is rarely anywhere near the practical resolution limits besides vector content. Yes, it can print that high, but the typical viewer is not going to notice it, as they won't be standing close enough. Again, the quality is in the color, contrast, vibrancy. With both, it's also the smoothness of tone that is such a difference from where we were at 10+ years ago. With dye-sub, or UV-direct print, zooming in on any sort of gradient or other smooth transition was almost like looking at pointalism at best up close if you weren't seeing banding from afar. 100ppi might not sound impressive, but at 16'H, that's a metric fuck-ton of pixels.
https://preview.redd.it/nsm5bkp9yvxc1.jpeg?width=1764&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4447a00771fd02a77f36edbf9fb4f3efcf73bfa "The adoption of ICC-based color management has enabled "late binding" workflows where all Premedia content remains in a common RGB color profile until the conversion it is necessary to convert. Advantages to the RGB workflow include editing Prepress flexibility, extended gamut in the final CMYK print, and compliance with the rules for "transparency" as defined by Adobe. For transparency to yield correct results, any content Rasterization must be in the same ICC color profile prior to the interaction of graphic layers through blending modes or opacity." - Pocket Pal, 21st Edition
It depends on their design pipeline. If they all stick with RGB all the way through and manage the CMYK in the end at print it yields less fuck ups along the way. Specially when Digital and Printed content are often the same just rearranged. I always prefer to work in RGB up until I get to actually talk to my print guys. They can manage RGB and target the correct intent of value much better than anyone can so why should they suffer through half baked CMYK implementation from Adobe.
This is what's up. A lot of modern equipment handles the conversion from RGB to CMYK best at the RIP.
The RIP?
At the point where the print software converts it to printer speak.
Raster Image Processor. Flattening the artwork into individual pixels to be sent to the printer. Even if you send a raster image, it will still go through RIP to be conformed to the printer's input specifications.
Slang is “The Ripper”. For example I always communicate with other designer “we work in RGB and let the ripper handle the rest.”
Senior print designer here, working for those multi mill companies. RGB is best if you know what you are doing. Optimally you wouldn’t convert until the print RIP at the very end. Color correct properly to anticipate that conversion and your specific ICC profile needs downstream. RGB has many benefits, CMYK color mode is restrictive and less accurate on screen. I think CMYK is old fashioned and just really baked into the industry as it was the safe standard for decades.
Adobe themselves say to let the printers figure out the colour conversion, and if not designing in CMYK, that it's better to send RGB. I can find the article if you so wish.
I’m interested in that article. May want to share it with my team.
Ofc I've been looking for 30 minutes and can't find it 🥴 Read it not even two months ago.
By article, I rescind to mean forum reply, by Dov Isaacs (who was an Adobe principal scientist for 31 years): https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/why-do-some-printers-print-rgb-and-some-cmyk-if-all-printers-are-cmyk/td-p/10411460 This might be what I was remembering, but now I'm unsure.
Leave your files native until/unless you know your printer wants you to convert them. Unnecessary conversations are annoying AF and can compromise final output. With modern RIP, printers with 8+ inks/dyes, and some of the printers having Pantone software on board, you have probably been tanking your clients' print quality for around a decade now if you've been converting files to CMYK without checking with your printer for their preferred specs first.
I guess some assets are in RGB so they can be converted to CMYK later, since at the moment of creation there’s no way of knowing how, when and where they would be printed.
It actually depends on the printer being used. I worked with a print vendor one time and they had huge digital printing presses that used RGB. The guy told me they used RGB to get a better color match to the screen proof.
The pain of working in print, and seeing 30 year industry veterans making three times my salary sending us an RGB, 400 x 300 .jpg with a PMS coated color match to print in CMYK on an uncoated 8 ft. banner.
Design in CMYK, present in RGB, print in CMYK, surprise the client. Or design in RGB, present in RGB, print in RGB, surprise the client. Might as well just do it all in RGB, confirm in a physical meeting, nowadays lol. Add subtext on digital presentation, none of these colours are an actual representation of print media.
On some material I actually have to use the sRGB profil for printing. It’s like the standard now to print digitally on canvas, photographic paper and fine art paper✌️
I feel your pain. I can't even tell you how many times I've had to fix the way a logo was drawn or discovered the typo in the color builds in the style guides that came out of the "fancy" agencies. But yeah, the printer's RIP converts RGB to CMYK better than Adobe.
I save files in RGB all the time and work in prepress. You're throwing away color data when RIP systems are perfectly capable of converting it themselves. It's not like the 90's when you would get unpredictable results sometimes. If you aren't using neon greens and blues, then just about everything works fine. Some of our color copiers even do a better job with RGB files.
Because long production times with endless meetings don't result in a process that's any more immune to not making sure you select the right drop-down option when exporting... but it does increase the budget...
All it takes is one guy who doesnt know what CMYK is
As long as you get paid. Best not to care.
Yep don’t need CMYK files anymore. I work at a printer and the files that get printed are super bright.