Hi PThompson, With respect to Giclee prints and CMYK -- it would be very helpful to find out what printer is being used. Giclee is a now common euphemism for inkjet printing, but was initially used several years ago by Iris to brand its printer's output. Given this, I thought I would comment on your post spekaing to how Designjet would work.
Inkjet color gamut is a complex interaction between the ink and each specific media -- primarily because the media affects the amount of ink that can be laid down, and secondarily because many ink/media combinations rely on the reflectance and whiteness of the media substrate (light passes through the dot, and is reflected off the substrate vs. light reflecting off the surface of the pigment of an offset dot). By all means, do not use an offset color space like Euroscale for an inkjet print. Inkjet printers, in particular those with light magenta and cyans, have a much higher gamut than offset. Some have a higher gamut than silver halide prints. To work optimally in CMYK in PS with a Designjet, you must select the proper media profile in your CMYK color preference. This should be available from the manufacturer. All Designjet printers have internal processes to convert between RGB and CMYK. These will be based on the media loaded in the printer. Note that this assumes the operator has properly selected the media type from the control panel, and the shop has kept the printer's firmware up-to-date. This default workflow is very easy, and produces very high quality results. It takes some good effort and skills working in a profiled CMYK space in PS to improve on it -- and it will be an incremental, not transformational improvement. If this print is important to you, and your print provider is not knowledgable on these issues, then you may want to consider finding another shop. Again, Giclee is just a term -- most often used for inkjet printing, but most closely associated with Iris. If you need another shop, find one with either a Designjet 5000/5500 or newer Epson printer, and you will get an excellent print by supplying an RGB file. I do not know enough about Iris workflows to comment what it requires. However, you should not assume Iris is vastly superior to today's six/seven color inkjet printers. Cheers, Steve > I only seem to get to speak to someone (the owner!) who > doesn't seem to be > able to tell me much except "provide CMYK files". > I have "converted" the RGB's to CMYK in PS7. They lose a lot > of the vivid > colours straight off. Pouring over Martin Evening's book I > have learned about > Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual, with and without black point > compensation. Generally the images look better with RC + black point. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
