In the early days of color spaces Apple and e.g. Photoshop up to version 5.5 set the monitor color space as working color space by default. But it soon became clear that a design office would be working with 10 Macs in 10 different color spaces. A neutral concept was needed.
There are many RGB Colour Spaces around. In the area of print media there are currently primarily three different variants: sRGB, AdobeRGB(1998) and eciRGB_V2.
The sRGB color space is widely used in digital cameras and is the industry leader in the consumer segment. Problem for printing: sRGB is a relatively small color space, and does not cover the color possibilities of modern offset printing systems and digital printers. Since offset printing profiles such as ISOCoated_v2 have a much larger color space, it makes little sense to perform retouching in sRGB.
From our point of view eciRGB_V2, a further development of eciRGB, is optimal. This color space has been specially created for use in the printing sector and offers some strengths:
- It covers the colors of all modern printing color spaces (offset, gravure, web offset, newspaper), but is not much larger and therefore does not give away any resolution.
- Equal shades of red, green and blue result in neutral shades of grey
- Between 0/0/0 and 50/50/50 there is roughly the same distance as between 50/50/50 and 100/100/100.
- The white is 5000 Kelvin and the gamma is 1.8 Kelvin.
The AdobeRGB 1998 color space, which has been widely used by Adobe since Photoshop 5.5 and today in all parts of the Adobe product range, is also well suited for the printing sector, but works with a gamma of 2.2 and is designed for degrees of whiteness from D50 to D65. All common print color spaces can also be well mapped in AdobeRGB 1998. You can find Adobe documentation on this color space here.
More articles related to this topic:
RGB colour spaces explained
RGB colour spaces are colour systems that represent different hues with the three primary colours red, green and blue. RGB colour spaces are used in digital image processing, photography and computer technology to precisely define colours. The most important RGB colour spaces and their special features are: sRGB sRGB is the most widely used RGB colour space and is used by most monitors, printers and digital cameras. It was developed by HP and Microsoft in the 1990s to create a standard for colour representation on the internet and on various … read more
“Digital First” often means “Colour Problems Second!”
Whether it’s a large global corporation or a small company, the following often applies to designs or redesigns today: we develop everything for digital first.
Gamut map: The colour tool for cross-media design
Due to our involvement with freeColour e.V., at the last meeting in Switzerland the desire for a cross-media tool for designers was expressed with which one can create intersections of colourspaces from the freieFarbe CIELAB HLC Colour Atlas XL. With Gamutmap, Proof GmbH has now created such a tool, which is available to all designers free of charge. With Gamutmap nearly 100 individual colour spaces can be indicated from 34.250 colours of the entire CIELAB colour space, or intersections from many combined colour spaces can be indicated. An example: As … read more
Why is the embedding of RGB profiles so important?
A few days ago we received a call from a customer in the field of design, who sent open Adobe InDesign data in ISOCoatedV2 300% with contained RGB images to the production company for a complex CD production on the advice of the producing company (“The printing company still has a prepress stage, which can then prepare your data optimally…”). The result of the finished printed CD booklets and inlays did not correspond at all to the calibrated monitor image of our customer, the client was also unhappy and requested … read more
How CMYK and RGB profiles are handled in proofing
When we receive a file from you, the first thing we check is whether there are colours other than CMYK in the file. If the file is built exclusively in CMYK, it will be sent directly for proofing. Handling wrong profiles with CMYK data / “Profile MismatchIf we have only received CMYK data from you, we will ignore all input and output profiles and only use the CMYK values that we bring to the ordered output colour space. Example 1: Data in ISOCoated, proof in ISOCoatedV2 ordered, thus wrong or … read more
Easy conversion of Pantone – HKS – CMYK – RGB with Adobe Photoshop
More often the question arises as to what kind of Pantone colour corresponds to the HKS 43 K. Or what CMYK value? And what kind of web color in RGB? If you own Adobe Photoshop, you can do these conversions directly there. In Photoshop CC all well-known color books are stored with values. Let’s assume we are looking for the Pantone equivalent and the matching CMYK color of HKS 43 K. 1: Open the color palette in Adobe Photoshop and select HKS K as the book and then the color … read more
Layout in RGB, print in CMYK. Problems?
Especially in larger companies today the layout in RGB is the rule rather than the exception. The advantages are obvious: In practice, however, there are two potential problems in particular. Problem 1: CMYK conversion in the last step.The catalogue is designed in InDesign, all data is perfectly matched, the last step before printing and proofing is the export to a printable PDF in CMYK. Usually this is done via a preset in InDesign, which defines the exact specifications for the color space conversion. In practice, however, this color space transfer … read more
Why monitor and paper don’t get along when it comes to colour.
Colour is colour, you’d think. That’s right. But have you ever tried to explain the colour of your new car or your new red wallet to a friend on the phone? You will notice that human colour recognition and the reproduction of the same in another medium is very difficult. The same applies to computers – better: monitors, and printers – i.e.: laser printers, inkjet printers or newspaper printing or offset brochure printing. Why is the red on a monitor different from exactly the same red printed on paper? It’s … read more
Embed profiles for proofing? Yes or No?
The question often arises whether color profiles should be embedded in the PDF files for proofing. To answer the question, you have to get some answers: The proof should simulate the subsequent offset printing. For offset printing, with few exceptions, the imagesetters have been configured so that a 70% black in the file is displayed as 70% black on the printing plate, no matter what profile was specified in the file. It didn’t matter whether it was coated paper or uncoated paper: 70% in the file corresponded to 70% on … read more
Das kam heute per Email von Datacolor: Ein kostenloses Tutorial für die Schwarz Weiss Fotografie mit folgemdem Inhalt:
“Neben der Kalibrierung von Monitoren und Druckern spielen die Farbeinstellungen in Photoshop (Lightroom, Indesign, Illustrator, …) eine entscheidende Rolle. Experten wie der Trainer Jens Eilers und der Fachautor Christian Piskulla sind sich hier erfreulich einig: Für die meisten Anwendungen empfehlen sie die Profile der European Color Initiative, kurz ECI. Die Spezialisten stellen auf ihrer Homepage eine Vielzahl von ICC-Profilen zum kostenlosen Download bereit, ergänzt um weitere Unterlagen rund ums Farbmanagement und digitale Arbeitsabläufe. Konkret bedeutet das: Laden Sie die Profile “eciRGB v2” und “ISO Coated v2 (ECI)” herunter. Kopieren Sie sie anschließend in “WINDOWS/ system32/spool/drivers/ color” oder in “Benutzer/ Benutzername/Library/ ColorSync/Profiles”. Jetzt wählen Sie die beiden Arbeitsfarbräume aus. Für einen rein fotografischen Workflow kann der Farbraum “Adobe RGB” eine Alternative sein. Behalten Sie in Dateien eingebettete Profile bei.”
Viele Grüße an Proof.de, Sie waren also einiges früher dran als die Experten von Datacolor 🙂
Mit besten Grüßen
Werner Fuchs