What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

CYMK vs RGB


Oh for Chrissake!

Well-Known Member
Messages
82
Likes
7
Hi folks,

I eventually want to physically print a comic book. The printer across the street basically said that commercial printing mean CMYK colors.

So, should I simply create and save my work in CMYK, or use RGB and then convert, assuming that the colors translate perfectly each time? Is there an advantage to either way? Disadvantage?

I'm just starting to learn about color in Pshop (and in general for graphics) and there is such a sh*tload of info it's scary. I'm glad I was smart enough to do my first comics in black and white a la Love and Rockets style so I could just focus on learning the tools. Learning color now seems more manageable and accessible.

OFC
 
if your printing in CMYK then start your project off with CMYK as when it comes to actual print you may find colour changes from how you saw it converted on screen and may be a bit let down with final printing results.
 
There has been a good bit of discussion on this topic lately. It can be quite confusing, but your printer is right and is telling you correctly as far as commercial printing goes. I believe though that the conventional wisdom is to use RGB for your color space during your creation process, then let your commercial printing company make the conversion. Good printers do that in this day and age. However, if he wants you to do it in CMYK then follow his instructions. One thing you need to be sure of is that your working with a calibrated monitor, so what you see is what your going to get regardless of the color space.

If your going to publish your work to the internet, definitely RGB. If your going to print it on your desktop inkjet again RGB, (the printer will make the conversion internally to CMYK for its' use. Color profiles in Photoshop should be sRGB for internet and Adobe 1998 for print. If your printing on an inkjet, you should get the proper profile for the printer based on the paper your using.

I'm sure Tom Mann will reply and he can give your more authoritative advice than me.
 
Last edited:
According to my Quickstart book, in my color settings (Edit > Color Settings) my best choices are North America General Purpose 2, and North America Prepress 2. Looking at my computer, both sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 are given as options in both selections. Is there a significant difference? I do understand that sRGB is best for web and Adobe 1998 is for print, but do they have even greater differences depending on whether you choose North America General Purpose 2 or North America Prepress 2?
 
I can't answer that, as I have never used those settings. However, if you Save for Web in PS, notice it makes a conversion to sRGB. I try and adhere to that for internet images, however, I download a lot of images and many of them are with Adobe 1998 and quite honestly, they look fine to me. I normally keep my working space in Adobe 1998 because I am going to end up printing what I produce and when I save for the web, I let PS convert it. It takes a very critical eye to see the difference IMHO. Now, be sure and don't send anything to view on the internet in CMYK, you'll get all kinds of weird looking stuff.
According to my Quickstart book, in my color settings (Edit > Color Settings) my best choices are North America General Purpose 2, and North America Prepress 2. Looking at my computer, both sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 are given as options in both selections. Is there a significant difference? I do understand that sRGB is best for web and Adobe 1998 is for print, but do they have even greater differences depending on whether you choose North America General Purpose 2 or North America Prepress 2?
 
.... should I simply create and save my work in CMYK, or use RGB and then convert, assuming that the colors translate perfectly each time? Is there an advantage to either way? Disadvantage?

Any image meant for commercial printing should be done in CMYK most especially if color separation films are used. The printer specified CMYK as it makes their work easier. But in any printing project you have to ask for a test print in order to check the accuracy of their work.

Here's an article that may be of interest to you.... http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/27/10-pre-press-tips-for-perfect-print-publishing/


According to my Quickstart book, in my color settings (Edit > Color Settings) my best choices are North America General Purpose 2, and North America Prepress 2. Looking at my computer, both sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 are given as options in both selections. Is there a significant difference? I do understand that sRGB is best for web and Adobe 1998 is for print, but do they have even greater differences depending on whether you choose North America General Purpose 2 or North America Prepress 2?

From what I know North American Prepress 2 is a setting best for photographers and color ink jet printing. It's a setting I'd sometimes use most especially if the printer I go to will do a direct laser print of my project. so far the results have been good... lol.

Here's a good tip from Photoshop author Scott Kelby - http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1660185
 
@OP - Unfortunately, I can't give you a full response at the moment. However I have a couple of short questions.

1. How many copies are you having printed in your first run?

2. What printing process does your printer suggest using? I presume it's going to be some variant of offset printing? If you were not familiar with the various printing processes, there's a nice Wikipedia article on The various printing processes. Unfortunately I'm in my car stopped at a light and can't find it for you at the moment but it should be easy to find.


Tom
 
By the way, I had a few minutes to scan through the two links provided by dv8. IMHO, the information provided in his first link is excellent. Follow it to the letter, and you can't go wrong.

However the information in the second link (Kelby's) is, IMHO, a confusing mixture of truly correct information, generalizations, simplifications, and somewhat outdated information. Personally, I would just ignore the second link and not bother reading it.

Also, don't forget that one should not make a distinction based on "commercial" or not, but on the exact type of printing process used, specifically, offset versus laser versus inkjet and all the many variants of each of these - Office Depot printing a one-of-a-kind poster for a kid is just as commercial as the web fed offset press that prints the daily newspaper in runs of hundreds of thousands.
 
Last edited:
The one thing I would add to that article is that many printers, even offset presses, are now happy to take RGB files instead of insisting on CMYK files. This is because from experience they have found it's easier to do the conversion themselves and do it correctly, versus trying to fix up someone else's incorrect CMYK conversion. With the advent of direct to plate printing, the profession of prepress men Has been decimated and prepress labor costs have dropped dramatically.
 
IF I might ever want to print, should I make the original in CYMK and convert to RGB, or just RGB and hope the printer can convert ?

I normally have color prints done by the local lab and they look OK, but I do a sweet HDR shot now and then that does not carry all the color, I think due to 16 bit vs 8 bit
 
Mike, if you had a nice, new, top-of-the-line, wide-format Epson inkjet connected directly to your computer, would you work in cmyk, or would you work in rgb and let the printer driver determine how of each color to apply?

Almost everyone in such a situation works in some flavor of RGB and lets the printer driver handle the conversion to the various amounts of c, m, y, and k inks needed at each point on the paper. If you want to get an idea of what it is going to look like when printed, you just turn on "soft proofing", not switch to doing all your work in a cmyk color space.

If you are having a few nice, high quality HDR prints made by some commercial firm, I would bet you that the printing system the printer employs would be quite similar (if not identical) to what one might have at home. In other words there would be absolutely no need to convert work in cmyk.

This is why I keep repeating my comment that the relevant question is not commercial_vs_non-commercial, but is what type of printer will be used.

HTH,

Tom
 
Last edited:
I worked as a comic colorist part time and full time for about 6 or 7 years for various small and indie publishers. I can tell you form experience, that every book I've worked on that has gone to print I've worked on in RGB and they came out just fine.

This question comes up a lot in comic pro forms and the answer has always been this. Work in CMYK if you like, but doing so greatly limits the amount of PS effects and filters you can use as they aren't available in CMYK mode.

If you color in RBG simply make sure under view/proof setup/ you have working CMYK checked. This kind of simulates what the colors would look like in CMYK.

Also, before you save out the final file, go to edit/convert to profile/working CMYK. This does a better job of converting than just switching modes under image/mode.

I've done this for every page I've worked on and there was little to no noticeable difference when the book went to print.

Hope that helps. :)

Best,
Chris
 
Hey Fatboy73, did you ever have to worry about registration error when the books you worked on were printed? I believe that the CMYK conversion method you mentioned would convert blacks to a rich black that might print poorly depending on the printing method. I'm used to designing for newsprint printed on a web press so designing with possible registration error in mind was necessary.
 
Here's a question for everyone so far (and thanks so much for everyone's input so far...)

If my comic is going to be in blacks, whites, and shades of grey a la Love and Rockets, does RGB or CMYK still matter much?

OFC
 
Love and Rockets is pen-and-ink (black & white), so no grays. Assuming you're sketching by hand, it should be scanned at 1200dpi (bitmap) and converted to live paint in Illustrator. Fills can be applied there, once in vector format. RGB vs CMYK doesn't matter in this instance, since both commercial digital presses and offset presses will only print black ink if you're not paying for color. Just be sure that your on-screen black shows 100% on the black channel in CMYK mode or R0G0B0 in RGB mode.
 
Hey Fatboy73, did you ever have to worry about registration error when the books you worked on were printed? I believe that the CMYK conversion method you mentioned would convert blacks to a rich black that might print poorly depending on the printing method. I'm used to designing for newsprint printed on a web press so designing with possible registration error in mind was necessary.

No I never had a problem with the blacks. I also forgot to mention that after converting to CMYK I also run the trapping feature at 1 pixel. Actually for sanity's sake, I made my self an action that converts, flattens,traps and saves as .tiff etc.
Saved me from the monotony of having to do it the long way on 40+ pages a month.
 
Hi folks,

I eventually want to physically print a comic book. The printer across the street basically said that commercial printing mean CMYK colors.

So, should I simply create and save my work in CMYK, or use RGB and then convert, assuming that the colors translate perfectly each time? Is there an advantage to either way? Disadvantage?

CMYK is a more limited gamut of color, it is limited by the capabilities of ink on paper. RGB is the fullest reliable web/digital spectrum, which is desirable for web/ebook purposes. RGB supports brighter and more vibrant colors, which are lost once converted to CMYK. You definitely want to do the work in sRGB or vector spot colors first!

Once your RGB art is complete, save a copy and convert it to CMYK for the commercial printer. Do not navigate to Image>Mode>CMYK!!! Instead, navigate to Edit>Convert to Profile, and either choose the printer-specific device CMYK profile, or choose US Web Coated CMYK. You will need to assess the toll the conversion has taken on your colors. You will need to create adjustment layers to boost the saturation slightly, and to darken the black channel's shadows and midtones. The black channel is going to give you all of your depth on the press, you need to make sure that all solid black areas are printing at 95-100%.

Note: The preferred method would be to pen-and-ink all outlines in black, then convert to live paint (vector) in Illustrator. In CMYK mode, all the black should be 0-0-0-100. Then, all fills should be CMYK-safe Pantone Process Swatches. Save art in .eps format and use InDesign to layout the book.
 
Last edited:

Back
Top