Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to put the final touches on my first children's book and I ran into an issue that I don't know how to fix. The pages I have worked on the past few days are all in CMYK and for some reason they went totally dull in color. I converted the file to RGB and back but I think I have done this before and it wasn't an issue. All my bright happy colors went sort of a grey tone and blah. They are different numberst too in the color chart. I tried changing the print output to like "japanese something and USA something" in the Photoshop setup but that didn't make it work either. I also checked my color setting and I usually keep it at Adobe 1998 for photos.

Also, I have a few clipping paths and when I convert the file to RGB it won't let those convert and I have to make them all over again. :( This is totally annoying since I need to save the file in RGB.


Any insite on my ignorance would be appreciated if you have the time to figure out what in the world I've done!

Thanks!

Loverly

Big topic. For future reference, you might want to check out the various color books by Bruce Fraser and Andrew Rodney.

But the short version is that RGB allows more colors than CMYK (gross oversimplification, it's less about the color space than ink vs. light). Converting to CMYK literally destroys some colors. So if you need to submit in RGB, start working in RGB, stay in RGB, and never leave RGB.

Nature of the beast. You can view my tutorial on color shifting from the link below. It's very basic, but may explain what is happening to your colors.

Always, always, always save your work as RGB. Only convert to CMYK when you are ready to go to press and need to save CMYK Tiff versions. Once you convert you cannot go back so save the original files as RGB.

Hi guys,
Here is what I know so far. I checked the three files that I worked on compaired to my original files. All three of them are different from eachother! I worked in RGB at first when I first started the book, and then when I coverted to CMYK it totally changed my color and not for the good! That didn't work for me at all. So I saved all the files in CMYK. The original files do not have a color profile embeded so I couldn't match it with the ones I worked on.
I think my best bet would be to dig out the DVD with the files on them before they went wako and start over with my corrections since I have no idea how the three pages could have ended up all with different profiles and I think it would take three years to figure it out. What a headache!

Loverly

okay, what i would do is open the file...convert the mode to RGB and then play around with the curves/sat/color selection till you get the desired result...then save it...Now when you convert to CMYK, its for the printer...so what you want to do is duplicate the file so you dont mess it up...then on the top where it says {view} select {proof set up}, then click on Working CMYK then go to {view} proof colors, that will show you what the colors would look like if you were to convert to the cmyk thats in the profile. to turn that off just click on it again. Also keep in mind that if you are going to send these to a professional printing place like a pre press house, they will make the CMYK conversion for you and they will know how to make the conversion as close as possible to your RGB file..so for future references, DONT CONVERT YOUR FILES TO CMYK IF YOU DONT HAVE TO. But if your the one printing it out thats another story....