Hello @enrimoore and welcome to the forum, and a Happy New Year!
Then it is usually better to let the publisher do the color conversion. Another possibility would be that the publisher explicitly states that your work will be printed in a certain profile and gives you this profile, this would allow you doing your softproofing against the given profile which will be more correct than checking against a profile that is only near to the color-space which will be used for printing.
Today it is, by the way, usually the better option to let the print shop/publisher do the conversion. The background is that they usually have qualified personnel that exactly knows what they have to do, usually use professional tools and are very experienced doing this.
And for non or semi-professional users this is not seldom problematic because a lot of them donāt use a calibrated working environment, so anything you do is prone to have errors without you even knowing or noticing them. This means the printer/publisher has to adjust it anyway.
But letās wait and see what users with more expertise and experience in this field have to say about it.
In case you havenāt already done it, it would be probably helpful for you to read the following chapters of Kritaās manual on the topic:
The color profile for non glossy paper types is normally duller to simulate the lack of reflection that matte paper has compared to glossy ones. You could try to compensate for it by using more saturated colors and change contrast but in the end thereās not much influence you can have on the material by changing the colors alone.
Since you canāt possibly account for all possible printers, let them give you a their most used color profiles to soft proof against and always keep your file in sRGB to not accidentally cull the colors beforehand, and always have the full range of colors for them to adjust if needed.
many thanks
I looked at your links, but I even tried CMYK color model, and nothing seems to change on my monitor, with both RGB or CMYK photos.
But I got very good results, actually printing a photo , using softproofing
so it should not be a problem.
The question is about CMYK sofrproofing and conversion
thanks
Normally you would never convert the color model yourself to prevent losing colors too early (CMYK has a smaller range of colors and once you converted your file there is no way to get these colors back, even when converting back to RGB space). Soft Proofing itself does only convert the image on the screen, not the actual file. Itās to check if the colors would be too off when printed (or looked at on another device with different color model)
This thread also has a lot of useful information on soft proofing and how it works
When soft proofing doesnāt change much on your display, this probably means that your original image is already really close to the color profile you proof against. If you want to make really sure, also turn on āout of gammutā warnings, this will show you wen a color is not available in the color profile that you proof against.
Also, to really make good use of color management, you need a color calibrated display.
I am perfectly aware of the basic issue.
I am terribly worried by this conversion. Why?
In addition to normal difficulties, this is totally unknown territory:
which printer ? no icc profile! Maybe they donāt even know about profilesā¦!
Btw Fogra39 2004 is obsolete and only designed for offset, not digital.
leave in RGB is probably the worst option. Or very risky bet
Yes, Iāll try to send them 2 tif, a sRGB and a IsocoatedEci, but I can already bet
that they will not accept.
The question was not about the expected difference I see between the two softproof.
Ok, softprofing with 305glossy etc. (RGB!) worked well on my monitor.
(normal Samsung curved, tried calibration, but reverted to IEC srgb, 11/100 brigthness, 44/100 contrast, 47/100 sharpness, dark room)
No idea if softproofing for IsocoatedEci, very different beast, will work well too.
And, did somebody actually get good printed results with Eci, or CMYK?
No, just the opposite probably because you donāt want to reduce the available colors until the very and of the production when it gets decided on what medium it will output. If they are professionals they will know about color profiles and they will be able to give you an icc profile of their printers you can import into Krita to soft proof against (or they will tell you to just give them an sRGB (or even larger gamut) file because they will do the conversation themselves (this is my experience)).
Iām not sure if it makes a difference since normally different software should not handle color profiles differently (except maybe Chrome and Firefox do it for some reason).
I thought I explained , but I am not being clear
anyway I have extremely good reasons to exclude the RGB option.
Much worse than tossing a coin.
Unless they accept both files, as I said
I canāt understand your last point on colorsā¦ if itās about the conversion,
Krita/ Cyan use Littlecms, other programs use other conversion engines.
My response probably isnāt helpful but I had to deal with all this, for the very first time in my life, about two years ago. I created a āchildrenās bookā for my granddaughter. It was for her fifth birthday. I did the entire layout in Krita but when I saw the first test copy it was too dark. After some back and forth with the print shop, it was determined that it was a problem with RGB to CMYK conversion. I went back home to figure out what I needed to do to accomplish this but within a few hours the shop called back and said they fixed it. They used an Adobe product (not sure which product). So, in my case, the printer fixed it on his end.
While this was all going on I tried to acquaint myself with these industry standards. I didnāt realize how complicated this process was. The types of binding, paper, image standardsā¦ itās a lot to contend with. lol good luck!
First, thanks. If I understand, you did a conversion to CMYK: with Krita?
Did you also try softproofing with Krita before sending it out?
If you did, did it only look too dark, or much more than that?
Do you recall which was the CMYK icc profile you used?
I guess you had only one experience with softproofing and conversion, right
Sorry, but in my case is maybe worse: they use lots of services/printers, and donāt specify a icc profile: only Fogra39.
many thanks for all your input
Btw, I only need to convert a very nice photo for the cover
Yes it was a conversion to CMYK but that conversion was done by the printing company. They used an Adobe product to convert the files - might have been Adobe Acrobat. They did that before I had a chance to learn how to do it in Krita. I believe Krita has the tools to do that but I never had the chance to confirm it. I gave the printer JPG files. Originally they wanted the files in PDF format. Clearly Adobe has a strong grip in the printing side of things.Theyāre like the Microsoft of publishing. I would have considered buying the necessary products but Adobe doesnāt make a lot of financial sense to me yet. And it wasnāt necessary in this case.
I canāt speak on the profiles used. But maybe the message here has to do with your publisher and all the various printer suppliers they use. Might make more sense for them to handle that part of the project. Or have them specify which profile to use for conversion. It would be really nice if there was a ābibleā on this topic. Iām sure there must be. Youād think with all the gajillions of things being published on this planet, there would be a standard that would be easy to understand.
I saw the machine they used. It was a large Minolta machine (about the size of a refrigerator). The ink is really a type of plastic powder (if I understood). The machine did all the folding and stapling too. Would be cool to have one in my basement lol
The program they used to do the separations, if they used an Adobe product, was most certainly Photoshop. But the problem with that, in the wrong hands, is that it makes the conversion between RGB and CMYK too simple. It is, one click. But it is controlled by a score of SETTINGS that you need to get set right. These are scattered across 2 or three dialogs, and some have dozens of settings.
I worked with all this for many years, and the problems wee that many āprofessionalā printers didnāt know what they were doing either. So the goal is to find a printer that actually does know. And as the age of the printed page is now well behind us, finding those that actually get what they are doing is only getting more difficult.
But many systems take your project, usually in a PDF format, with RGB images, and do all of the conversions on the fly. And if color is important, you should get what is called a āPre-press proofā, if they still do those. They were costly though, usually like $100 a pop.
The trick though is to set up what used to be called a āLUCYā image (with all the RGB, CMYK, grayscale, and a Carmen Miranda style image, all on one page. Send THAT OUT FOR A PRE-PRESS PROOF. And then use that to calibrate your system to what the printer outputs. In other words, close the loop on your end.
It wonāt help at all, itās just a report:
Iāve been getting good results in prints without having access to any information about color profiles, etc.
Before sending the illustration to the client, I always open the image in PS to see how it is and make any small adjustments, but the image has been coming out of Krita with practically no need for adjustments.
But I always lighten the images a little (with curves) already imagining that they will be dark when printed. Because my biggest concern has always been very dark prints.
Over time, Iāve adapted my way of working so that there is little difference between RGB and CMYK. I donāt even mind some color conversions (although some colors end up quite grayish).
I also usually view the image on TV, on my cell phone, PC, laptop, just to see the difference.
In Krita, I sometimes convert to CMYK to lose all the RGB information, then I go back to working in RGB. I always work with the Adobe98 profile and CMYK PS5.
Of course, it is an experiment that does not seek any āatomicā precision about colors.
(translated by google translator)
thanks a lot. I have news. I searched and found services which make ācertifiedā Fogra39 prints. Maybe similar to your suggestion. I already had some prints, I know nothing of the attached color certification, but quality is really better than what I feared. Not like the quite good prints from a āRGBā printer, but good. Done with ECI isocoatedv2 CMYK.
Also, I just discovered that the publisher wants ICC coatedFogra39L by xrite.
The lady in charge of technical things told me just āfogra39ā: I even sent her a list of 6 icc profiles, including the one from ICC / xrite, which is the one they need . Then she said that their service was not ok for meā¦
So now all is much better, even if the publisher use many print services.
Probably Iāll get some more prints using the coated Fogra39L from ICC, just for peace of mind.
I use Gimp, but it seems that Krita conversion is not bad. All the adjustments in photoshop might be an optimization for inks, paper etc. but in that case you should also know from the printing shop all those details, which I donāt have.
Also, MMillerās report seems to confirm this.
I lost a lot of time and useless work, due to that lady, the one who should have known since the beginning.
Now I must ask her about the ācutsā on the cover, and the ābleedsā , 5mm. per
side, which seems very much and risky for the image. Cross fingers, maybe this time she is more helpful.
Hello