Adobe Photoshop Training with Dan Margulis

I created a custom CMYK in PS by adjusting to 280 and light and saved out. When soft proofing there is no simulate paper white?

Is this adjusted custom profile not valid to use in Proof Setup>Custom function once altered? Am I missing something regarding Custom CMYK in PS?

Doug Walker, FP

website: http://www.walkerphoto.com

Member, PPW, ASMP, APA SF

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Doug writes,

No. The Custom CMYK routine doesn’t support adjusting the white and black points.

You can use it, without simulating paper white, of course. No, you aren’t missing anything about Custom CMYK, but our friends at Adobe are. This is something that has come up time and again in the past five years.

The ICC profile specification is very powerful. It can handle almost any demand. But, unfortunately, Adobe refuses to let us edit such profiles directly in Photoshop, which sharply limits their utility to the high-end CMYK user. So, we are stuck with an ancient format with a lot of flaws, but at least we can edit it.

Dan Margulis

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We have had fairly good results with the standard SWOP profile but when probing for tighter specs we were told to use 280 and light generation. All else being equal. Job runs on any of 6 presses on any given day so consistency is a crap shoot.

Since we cannot simulate paper white with the adjusted profile while softproofing what are we to expect to be most visually different all things being equal.

Heavier blacks? More contrast?

Doug Walker, FP

website: http://www.walkerphoto.com

Member, PPW, ASMP, APA SF

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Whether you’ve got a white point compensation or not, the monitor is going to look higher-contrast than the print. That’s the most difficult thing for photographers to grasp, in my experience: in print it’s going to look flatter, period. You’re well advised to go for more contrast, IMHO, even if color fidelity isn’t great.

The Custom CMYK black point deficiency is far more serious, in my view. Custom CMYK always assumes that black ink is absolutely black and completely opaque. This can seriously mislead anybody who’s trying to evaluate shadow detail. Personally, I don’t think too many people are fooled by the lack of paper white.

Dan Margulis

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Doug, when this has come up in the past - I have mentioned a third option - although there is a fourth one too. The first two options are to use the Adobe profile, even though it is not what the press guys would ideally like. The second is to use custom CMYK to spec your own seps, but then you hit the custom CMYK issues (if they are a concern to you).

The fourth option, is to edit the TAC and or black plate - but this is not really an option for high volume settings.

The third option, is to use a SWOP profile that has 280 TAC and light K generation (yes, I know that SWOP calls for 300%).

Chromix Profile Central offer a series of profiles (half dozen or so) to members (free rego) - generated from SWOP TR001 data - with a range of GCR and UCR with various TAC. These profiles are not as ‘tame’ as the Adobe TR001 profiles, which I think is both a positive/negative thing.

The site has been down for a while, although myself and countless other folk must have downloaded these profiles when the site was up:

http://www.chromix.com/

This 280TAC LTGCR profile is around half a meg compressed, contact me offlist if you would like to see how it performs in your setting (it does support paper white and black ink softproofing).

Regards,

Stephen Marsh.