Printing saturated reds

[grossmisconduct]

Hi everyone! I havent been on this forum for a long time and havent been doing much retouching for a long time. Retouching - allthough i like doing it a lot - is really not cost effective living in a high cost country (except if you are really on the top I guess). I have actually changed for Illustrator an graphic design. Anyway I am doing some retouching now for an old client and I have run into a problem. And I believe its not a very uncommon problem either. So I have this photo of a girl in a red dress, and (obviously) I am getting gamut warnings all over the place. (My proofing setup is for CMYK US Web coated (SWOP) v2). I can of course desaturate the reds and the warning goes away but that leaves a totally different dress.

So my question: Is there no way of printing saturated reds? I might be wrong but I do belive to have seen saturated reds in magazines. So whats the trick? Do I need to I use pantone or spot colors, or am I left with these desaturated reds. It just cant be..

NB! Happy to see the forum is still up and running strong as ever, and now with the new retouchpro live as well. Looking Forward to the Lee Varis show.

[Aladdin]

Re: Printing saturated reds

NB! Happy to see the forum is still up and running strong as ever, and now with the new retouchpro live as well. Looking Forward to the Lee Varis show.

Sorry, not related to your question.

I was not aware that Lee Varis will be on, this is one show any serious retoucher can't afford to miss, highly recommended.

I don't know what your dateline is or when Lee will be on, but, one thing for sure, he has an answer to your question.

[John Wheeler]

Re: Printing saturated reds

Hi grossmisconduct

1) You need to print with a printer/paper combination that supports a wider gamut. Printers with the higher end ink jet printers using luster or glossy paper has pretty wide gamut printing.

2) Thought not a must, having a wide gamut monitor with soft proofing using the ICC profile for the printer makes it the easiest to see what you will have as an end result.

Hope these suggestions are helpful

[skoobey]

Re: Printing saturated reds

Well, that's why publications do proofs.
Only real way to deal with this kind of thing is to work on profile given by the printer, rather than generic one.

[klev]

Re: Printing saturated reds

Well, that's why publications do proofs.
Only real way to deal with this kind of thing is to work on profile given by the printer, rather than generic one.

You're ignoring a couple things. First off while that comes up a lot, try doing it. You're likely to receive a pdf with their submission guidelines that does not have an actual ICC profile of any kind. Even if it did, it's likely that you would still end up clipping reds. The problem is likely in the way he's trying to adjust this. If there isn't sufficient detail/differentiation to keep it from looking weird upon taking some red out, he'll be left to toying with it. You could also use a touchplate, but that isn't a practical solution. It's also not something that the OP should even take seriously due to just how impractical in cost and setup time. I would say that the best approach is probably to process the image more than once. Make adjustments for the red dress on one and use a mask of it to drop in the less saturated dress. This is assuming that he's not just adding too much contrast to it in the first place and creating his own problems.

[Aladdin]

Re: Printing saturated reds

Well, that's why publications do proofs.
Only real way to deal with this kind of thing is to work on profile given by the printer, rather than generic one.

+100

I always install whatever profile the intended print house send me, it is a must.

[klev]

Re: Printing saturated reds

+100

I always install whatever profile the intended print house send me, it is a must.

It is nice if you can get it. As I mentioned it doesn't always happen. You're often stuck there. Even then, it doesn't solve the OP's problem. He is trying to print something that will probably map yellow out of gamut and possibly magenta in spots. Having an ICC compliant profile doesn't change that at all. The general transformation is relative colorimetric. You could try perceptual, but it has never worked as intended since day 1. ICC actually tried to improve upon that with the version 4 specification. Anyway it sees an out of gamut color. It maps to the closest thing in gamut, meaning you still don't get that red. You get 4 numbers for each pixel where at least 1 of the first 3 is 100% or 0%. Even if you have a better profile than the generic one, it just gives you a better idea of your boundaries. It doesn't necessarily extend them. Of course you should have the right specifications, but those just require submission guidelines that outline separation type and ink limit. Note that web coated has an ink limit of 300%, which is probably about what you're looking at with a magazine.

On a side note take a look at the detail on a really saturated red the next time you see one on a magazine cover. It's a color where you'll see frequent loss of detail.

[andrewrodney]

Re: Printing saturated reds

So my question: Is there no way of printing saturated reds? I might be wrong but I do belive to have seen saturated reds in magazines. So whats the trick?.

No trick. You need a proper (good) profile for the specific output process and you need a good matching proof. Then you can print the most saturated red that process can reproduce. What you don’t want, what can be a big issue is the saturated color shifting in the process (either due to wrong or improper use) of a profile. This isn’t to say you’ll get as saturated red from a 4 color press as you would off an 8 color Epson ink jet! But the less saturated red should appear red in context with the rest of the image if the image processing and color management are handled in an ideal fashion.