Soft Proofing CMYK

[keith english]

I guess this is the best place to ask this since it involves soft-proofing in photo-shop.
For a class on printing and photoshop I need to find out what paper a magazine is printed on to soft proof a file in CMYK. I chose "View Camera" of course. Does anyone know what paper stock it is printed on (an example from the photoshop pull down would be US Web Coated (Swop)v2. I have emailed viewcamera (Steve Simmons I assume) and hope to hear from them. Another question. Does anyone soft-proof CMYK for a magazine, and print it out on ink-jet. Many of the students are obsessing on getting Epson proof paper, but if that doesn't aproximate the paper the magazine is printed on does it really give much of a match? Thanks.

[Bruce Watson]

I guess this is the best place to ask this since it involves soft-proofing in photo-shop.

The majority of traffic on this forum has to do with large format cameras and all that entails. So IMHO a better place to ask would be a printing group like the yahoo Wide_Inkjet_Printers group. There are a number of people on the yahoo group who actually do pre-press proofing of the type you describe.

Alternately you could just make a phone call to the people at View Camera Magazine. They might answer your questions on the spot.

[Kirk Gittings]

Keith, I produce CMYK files for magazines every month. I am doing 20+ right now as we speak. I don't do any paper proofing, but the magazine does with their layouts, but I do not find them very accurate. IMO no injet paper looks anything like webpress printed magazine paper. I just soft proof with the custom printer files which happens to be for many of my magazine clients, American Web in Denver. I use the custom printer profiles because it is not just paper, but ink, humidity etc. I started doing my own conversions about 1 1/2 ago to get better control of my images. It took some practice and seeing them in print, but I find it super simple now. An article by Jeff Schewe helped me allot:

http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdf..._reproprep.pdf

[Gordon Moat]

I only work in CMYK, and try to avoid delivering files as RGB to publications. The paper specifications you should be most concerned with that will affect your printing are whiteness and brightness. If you only get brightness value, then you can at least adjust for that.

SWOP coated is a good guess for most magazines. It will get you within a safe margin of error. If a publication has another profile they suggest, or a custom profile for their CMYK, then use that. Most presses can do better than SWOP, but don't assume that without asking.

http://www.swop.org/certification/systemList.asp

This is a listing of SWOP certified hard copy proof systems. Run any of these as they were tested and specified, then you have a good hard copy proof. You can also send that to the publication, unless they only want FTP of files.

If you want to soft proof in PhotoShop, then set your info palette to read CMYK, and read out Total Ink. Then use your colour picker tool (eye dropper) and read the actual values. If you understand CMYK, you can also view the Colour Channels in B/W (not in colour) and see how the individual colours should print.

One hint is that Black (K) is a component of RGB, and included in that. In a perfect world, RGB would translate to CMY, and we would have three colour printing. Unfortunately, the CMY result lacks some crispness and darker areas can be weak, so Black (K) is added to the run. When you first convert RGB to CMYK in PhotoShop, you might find that when you just look at the Black (K) Channel, it is somewhat weak or lacking a good density. You can adjust that with Levels, or several other methods. Anyway, practice makes one better and faster at this.

My personal feeling on all this is that too much emphasis on RGB creates way too many problems. It is fine if all you are doing is closed loop printing to your own inkjet printer, but a severe crap shoot on publications getting it right. My advise is to teach more about printing with CMYK, because there will be barely any place willing to spend time properly converting your RGB files for publication; most just hit the convert to CMYK button, and let it fly off the press . . . Then when your image prints like crap, or not so great, you will get the blame. Besides, it really is not that difficult.

Last Hint: call a paper company or paper distributer to find out which paper a magazine might use. Often they can get you the important specs quickly. Then you will know the brightness and often the weight, which is about all you need on that.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[keith english]

Thanks for the great info! I thought the class was putting to much emphasis on proofing paper.

[Helen Bach]

One of my clients has their printing done by Quad Graphics. They have some useful information tucked away here and there on their site, like here.

Best,
Helen

[Ken Lee]

There is a very nice Adobe tutorial by Andrew Rodney, on the subject of Color Managed Printing and Proofing in Photoshop CS3, here.

Note: It is a "re-broadcast" of an online seminar. You don't need to, nor can you, participate. Just wait for the introductory portion to pass, and the real content will appear soon enough.