[Mon]

Hi everyone! The first time I wrote this I lost my session (grrr), so this time I'll keep it short...

Has anyone used Painter7 when making images for professional print? Is the Kodak color correction-thingy reliable, or just a pain in the butt? And how do you use it properly?

Any info is welcome, I'm an idiot with these things. Links to good tutorials would be great!

Cheers!
/mon
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[balistic]

Are you printing things yourself, or going through a professional print shop?

Personally, I don't like to use software color correction. If you've got a good quality monitor, adjust it so that black areas are close to true black, and set its color temperature to about 9300k. Both Iris (Giclee) and dye-sublimation/photo prints can reproduce RGB images quite well. If your monitor is calibrated correctly, and your image looks good on your monitor, chances are it will look good when handled by a print shop that prints a lot of RGB images.

If you're working in CMYK though, I've got no clue . . . I always work in RGB.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Mon]

I'm on good terms with a professional shop, they've got these HUGE Canon Space-laser-warp-printers that can do really big ones.

My monitor stinks, it's as outdated as my pc...

I tried printing one of my old ones fulci_zombie

The print looked as dead and lifeless as the zombie... All the green stuff totally went of the scale and bled through everything. That was an RGB image done in pshop, I think Painter saves everything in CMYK by default (for whatever difference that does)

I'll try tweaking the color temperature a bit though, thanks! =)

/mon
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[Jin]

No, Painter works in RGB color space only and Painter's native format, RIFF, only saves in RGB color space..

With TIFF saves from Painter 6 and 7, you are asked if you want to save in RGB or CMYK color space. That's the only format where CMYK comes into play. I don't think the CMYK color space option for TIFF saves was even available prior to Painter 6.

There are some generic CMYK color profiles in the Kodak Color Correction's drop down menus in Painter 7. I have avoided learning how to use Painter 7's Kodak Color Correction but since I have a new Epson, maybe I'll be forced to learn. Ugh!

[xheadinthecloudx]

I'm a graphic design major, so I'll poke my head in on this one.
90% of inkjets out there, as well as most other non-offset (commercial press) printers work best from RGB files. Laser printers are included in this, although printers with PostScript drivers (both inkjet and CMYK) can produce good prints off of CMYK images. You'll get a much closer match to the screen. Any good print shop should do at least a little bit of color correction, though.

If your file will be sent to a press/prepress process (i.e. getting a match print or color keys made), you should convert your file to CMYK (either in Painter, or Photoshop. Whichever). Otherwise, you will probably get charged extra when the printer discovers it's an RGB file (hopefully before they actually do anything with it). Remember, it's their time they spend working with your image, and they expect to be paid for it.

When in doubt, give them a disk with the following:
An rgb file (picture_rgb.tiff)
A CMYK file (picture_cmyk.tiff)
and a note saying they are identical pictures, just one in CMYK and the other in RGB.

Or check when you're calling to get prices. Most -good- printers are perfectly happy to tell you what they want, as they will spend less time on your job and be able to do more stuff.

Last, always give them the closest printout you could get off of your inkjet, with notes saying "should be slightly less green." It doesn't matter if they want the CMYK file. They don't care what file that was printed was- it just gives them a base to go off of for color.
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[B0b]

RGB (red, green, blue) = 16.7 Million colour display (visual direct light) (24bit)
CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key) = 12.5 thousand colours rosette print (visual light refraction)



a = Lab
b = RGB
c = CMYK