color shifting prob
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- johndiggity
i do a lot of brand work and as such and constantly mocking up various applications of the branded elements for client and putting them in presentations. i am having a lot of trouble keeping the colors being presented consistent throughout the presentation and am looking for some advice/help/pointers.
eg. i begin a project with pms swatches, usually designing in indesign or illy in cmyk mode. i design a simple 3 spot color piece with an overprint and export this as a pdf. i then take that pdf and open it with photoshop to insert into a live surface psd, or some other application image, which needs to be in rgb to get the vanishing point filter to work. after this is done, i am then flattening the image and converting to cmyk and bringing the psd into an indesign presentation deck. the prob i am having is with using the native spot colors in the indesign deck looking radically different than the artwork that is imported.
how do i ensure that these colors will reproduce as consistently as possible in my indesign presentation doc?
- mirrorball0
I'd stick to a full RGB workflow, then when its time to talk about Pantone my friend get the ole tactile Pantone Chips Book out.
- horton0
yes if your going AI > PS rgb, then use an Illy rgb workspace, or at least covert to rgb profile when saving to the pdf.
- monospaced0
mirrorball is right. You must remember that Pantone colors and overprinting can only be simulated by the screen.
Also check how you're exporting your PDF, because there are many color conversion options.
- horton0
+ i would think easier if you just export jpegs from Illy, they'll show your overprints.
if your doc colormode is cmyk, export to cmyk and then convert to rgb in photoshop.
- johndiggity0
thanks for the help! i do most of the work in indesign just because of the better control of typesetting. i just swapped out the pantone swatches that i was using with the corresponding rgb values of the swatches from the pantone color bridge and exported those as pdfs with "no color conversion" selected in the output panel destination tab. i did see a "simulate overprint" checkbox in that panel as well, but it's dimmed out. however the pdf appears to be rendering the overprint just fine anyway.
i then opened the pdfs in photoshop, dropped the art into the app image, saved it as an rgb psd and brought that into indesign. AND IT ALL SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED. thanks again. it seemed counter intuitive to do this stuff in rgb because most of it is printed apps, but it works and i'm not going to question it. as long as the client quits asking me what the color is actually going to look like...