Quoting Jack Lowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > With knowledge and experience, extremely pleasing results can be achieved. > There's no short-cut, I'm afraid, other than lots and lots of reading and > real-world experience. > Jack:
I totally agree with you, but with the delivery of CMYK files also comes potential liability. It's best to have this all laid out in your paperwork if photographer hope to prevent catching the blame. If the othe David wants to handle this himself, and is able to get the specifications for the flavour of CMYK that the printer favors, he could get some assistance from ColorCentric (http://www.colorcentric.com/). This same "technology" is being used by many printers here in the US under the flag of "Prolatus" (http://www.prolatus.com). In a nutshell, Colorcentric offers the services of their technicians to craft a custom color look up table to translate the RGB values to CMYK values depending on your specific press needs. Cost is $15 USD per file for standard color correction/translation, and turnaround is 24 hours or less. They have devised some rather clever software that allows them to "package" a version of your RGB file which you then upload to their website (typically these files are only a few hundred kilobytes, even if the image is 50 or 60 mb in size!). Their tech's then "unpackage" the contents, and using a variety of color editing tools, figure out the best way to "map" the RGB values to CMYK. They send you back a "correction" file which you then drag and drop on to the same software, which launches and "filters" your RGB data into CMYK, ready for the printer. The only caveat is that you must have a good fix on the following: Linescreen: (150 lpi, 175 lpi, or the euro equivalents) Type of press: (sheetfed or web offset) Type of separation: GCR (light, medium, heavy), UCR, etc Amount of "total ink": typically 285 to 300 for SWOP, higher for sheetfed If you can get this info from the printer, as well as a feel for dot gain, then you should find their services worthwhile in the beginning. In time you can take what you have learned and try to separate your own RGB to CMYK using photoshop and see what you have to do to get the same results. But in the meantime this would allow you to offer this service and mark up the results. Hope that helps. David -- Creating an image database? visit (http://ControlledVocabulary.com/) and join the discussion list, or read areview of the Image Info Toolkit utility at: (http://ControlledVocabulary.com/imagedatabases/imageinfotoolkit.html) David Riecks http://www.riecks.com - http://zillionbucks.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
