PDF Color Management Essentials
PDF Color Management Essentials
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
1
Color Management and PDF
Acrobat 5-6 Color Management for Proof Exporting PDF from Publishing applications
Device Dependent
• Photoshop 6-7
Device dependant CMYK in PDF
ICC ICC
(DeviceCMYK)
CMYK Proof Space ->
Working Space Profile RGB Working Space
Device Independent
Connection
• Freehand 10
Display
Space
LAB color in PDF
ICC
(LAB
(LAB) Definition) Proof Space ->
RGB Working Space
• Illustrator 9-10
• XPress 4.1-6
ICC
CalRGB color in PDF
Proof Space ->
ICC RGB Working Space
(CalRGB)
sRGB
Profile
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
2
Color Management and PDF
• If “Use Proof Setup” and “Embed Color Profile” is set, colors will be
ICC based
• Colors will first be converted to the current Proof space
• ICCbased definition will use the ICC profile (RGB or CMYK) from Proof Setup
• If “Use Proof Setup” is set without “Embed Color Profile”, colors will
be DeviceRGB or DeviceCMYK depending upon the profile selected
in Proof Setup
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
• If “Use Proof Setup” is set without “Embed Color Profile”, colors will
be DeviceRGB or DeviceCMYK depending upon the profile selected
in Proof Setup
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
3
Color Management and PDF
• The
Xtension “PDF Filter” adds “Export as PDF” to the
XPress Utilities menu
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
InDesign 1.5-3 PDF color with Include ICC on Quark XPress with PDF Filter
• Colors will be encoded as ICCBased • PostScript is written to disk, then passed to Distiller
• Document Color Management must be enabled
• Distiller and a Distiller PPD are required
• Export Style should have “Include ICC Profiles” set and Colors set to “Leave
Unchanged” • Distiller Job Options govern the creation of the PDF file
• Every page object may have a different ICC Profile assigned • If Color Management is enabled in XPress, colors are converted
colorimetrically converted from their source spaces to the Composite
• Placed Photoshop and TIFF images will maintain embedded tagging, or tagged
using the default profiles in Document Color Settings Printer space
• This can be altered via “Image Color Settings”, though not for placed PDF or EPS • PDF Filter Preferences can override some of Distiller’s Job Options
• Native InDesign page components will be assigned the profile for the Default • Not color settings, so Distiller must be set to tag Device color space with the
RGB or CMYK from InDesign Preferences depending upon the mode in which Composite printer profile selected in XPress
the page object is created
• If “Include ICC profiles” is not set but Document Color Management
is enabled, all colors will be colorimetrically converted to Composite
Printer space, then encoded as DeviceCMYK
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
InDesign 1.5-3 PDF color with Include ICC off Creating PDF with Distiller 5-6
• If
“Leave colors unchanged” is set a mix of DeviceRGB • Many applications do not have functionality for the
and DeviceCMYK encoding will result from a mixed Export of PDF
color document
• Setting Colors to “CMYK” in the PDF Style is a better • Some that do use Distiller anyway, such as XPress
choice
• all
colors are converted to composite CMYK (or Separation • Different implementations of PDF Export create PDF
simulation on Composite), then encoded as DeviceCMYK files with different color space encodings, so creating
• If
“Include ICC profiles” is not set but Document Color device-dependent PostScript for processing with Distiller
Management is enabled all colors will be converted to can be more reliable
Composite Printer space then encoded as DeviceCMYK
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
4
Color Management and PDF
• DeviceRGB
• Distiller
can provide compression, font embedding, and • The nemesis of graphic arts producers
color conversion or tagging when processing PostScript • DeviceRGB encoding in PostScript caused output errors in some prepress
workflows
• Even if the color printed, the conversion from to CMYK is hard coded since
• Distiller Job Options provides access to these features PostScript Level 1 so the appearance of image output can suffer greatly
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
5
Color Management and PDF
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
CMYK
Device indepent PostScript Marking Engine
LAB or simple RGB PostScript
CIEBasedABC CRD
(CIEBasedABC) CSA Profile
Connection
Device indepent PostScript Space
LUT profile based RGB PostScript
CIEBasedDEF CRD
(CIEBasedDEF) CSA
Distiller and PostScript color spaces Distiller Color Policy for PDF 1.4-1.5
“Leave colors unchanged”
• Distiller may be configured to leave colors unchanged, preserving the
• Distiller will process PostScript (.ps) files and use the input color commonly used Device color spaces
spaces to determine the color encoding in the resultant PDF PostScript PDF
Device Dependent
• Device dependent PostScript color spaces may be left unchanged or
Device dependant PostScript RGB Device dependant PDF RGB
assigned a profile for definition or conversion (DeviceRGB) (DeviceRGB)
Device Independent
• Be converted using their CSA as an “input profile”
Device indepent PostScript sRGB Device indepent PDF
LAB or simple RGB ProfileICC RGB
• Have their CSA converted to an ICC profile with which the colors in the PDF are CIEBasedABC
or
(CIEBasedABC) LAB definition (CalRGB)
CSA Profile
tagged Connection sRGBICC
Profile
Device indepent PostScript Space Device indepent PDF
LUT profile based RGB or LAB definition LAB
(CIEBasedDEF) CIEBasedDEF (LAB)
CSA
LAB definition
Device indepent PostScript Device indepent PDF
CMYK RGB or CMYK
(CIEBasedDEFG) CIEBasedDEF (ICCBased)
CSA
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
6
Color Management and PDF
Distiller Color Policy
“Tag Everything for Color Management” Configuring Distiller to process .ps from XPress
• Distiller may also be configured to tag images only, for instance to • If
the XPress workflow uses a standard device dependent
preserve rich black in text or graphics
PostScript PDF CMYK, select the profile that represents that CMYK as
Device Dependent the CMYK Working Space
RGB Working Space Profile from
Device dependant PostScript RGB Distiller Job Options Device dependant PDF RGB
(DeviceRGB) ICC (DeviceRGB)
Distiller Color
Tagging
(no
• If
Color Management is being used in XPress, configure
conversion)
Device dependant PostScript CMYK
(DeviceCMYK)
ICC
Device dependant PDF CMYK
(DeviceCMYK)
the settings for printing to a composite printer
CMYK Working Space Profile from
Distiller Job Options
Device Independent
• Select
the same composite printer profile chosen in
(CIEBasedDEF) CIEBasedDEF (LAB)
CSA
LAB definition ICC
ICC
Device indepent PostScript
CMYK
CIEBasedDEF
ICC
ICC Profiles
Device indepent PDF
RGB or CMYK XPress as the Distiller CMYK Working Space
(CIEBasedDEFG) CSA based on (ICCBased)
CIEBased CSAs
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
How to configure Distiller for your workflow Configuring Distiller to process .ps from Office
Applications
• For device dependent PostScript (most customers) it is a choice of • Microsoft
whether to create device dependent or device independent PDF
Office applications all encode colors as RGB,
writing DeviceRGB to the .ps file through the PostScript
• Device dependent will work for the original imaging device
print driver
• But device independent will work with that and other devices, based
upon the Advanced options in the Acrobat 5 print dialog
• The remedy is to Distill the .ps from Office applications
• In most cases for print a Device independent PDF with ICCBased
encoding makes sense and set the right RGB working space to have all colors
• For cross media on-line and print workflows, setting Distiller to “Tag
tagged as ICCBased
all as sRGB” may be a more reliable configuration, but color gamut
will be constrained by this choice • sRGB would seem the logical choice but the colors are
not in fact encoded in sRGB
How to select Distiller working spaces Learning about color in PostScript with a text editor
• PostScript can be examined with a text editor
• Usethe CMYK profile that most closely matches the
CMYK used in production
• Searching for color spaces names can be helpful
• This may be a standard or custom press profile %ADBEndImagePosition
%%BeginIncludedImage
%%IncludedImageDimensions: 612 612
• If there is RGB in the workflow that has been written to %%IncludedImageType: 3 8 DeviceRGB
%%IncludedImageQuality: 2.0
.ps as DeviceRGB (not likely), assign the proper scanner
or RGB Working Space profile for the workflow
...How well will this .ps file work in a CMYK prepress workflow?
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
7
Color Management and PDF
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
• Lantana ImageWorks
• Enfocus EyeDropper
8
Color Management and PDF
How Color Management works in Acrobat 6 printing Acrobat 6 printing options - Output profile selected
• When printing from Acrobat 5, three general color options are • Device colors are converted to the output profile using the working
available space profiles from preferences as input profiles
• All are accessed via the Advanced options in Acrobat 5 print dialog • CalRGB and LAB colors are converted to the output profile
• ICCBased colors are converted to the output profile using their
assigned ICC profiles as source profiles
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
• CalRGB and LAB colors are converted to the Working space profile • Apply Working Spaces
from preferences, then sent as Device values • Used for PDF files with Device values that have not been tagged as ICCBased
• ICCBased color spaces are sent using their alternate definition, • DeviceRGB and CMYK treated as ICC based with Working Space profiles from
DeviceCMYK, DeviceRGB, or DeviceGray Preferences as their assign profile
• Specify a Profile for ICC CM
Acrobat 6 printing options - PostScript Color Acrobat 5-6 Color Managed Printing
Management
Device Dependent
• Device spaces are encoded as CIEBased, with CSAs created from the
Device dependant RGB in PDF
Working Space Profiles from Preferences (DeviceRGB) ICC
RGB ICC
• CalRGB and LAB colors are sent as CIEBased with CSAs for LAB Working Space
Profile selected
in Print dialog
and CalRGB (sRGB) Device dependant CMYK in PDF
ICC ICC
• ICCBased colors are sent as CIEBased, with CSAs created from the (DeviceCMYK)
CMYK
Profile Profile selected
Working Space in Print dialog DeviceCMYK
ICC profiles with which the ICCBased objects are tagged Device Independent
Connection
or
DeviceRGB
Space Composite Printer
LAB color in PDF ICC
(LAB
(LAB) Definition) Profile selected
in Print dialog
ICC
CalRGB color in PDF Profile selected
ICC in Print dialog
(CalRGB)
sRGB
Profile
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
9
Color Management and PDF
Conclusions - 1
• PostScript
color management is to hard to control
files can only be output on PostScript devices, which
Thank you!
many small office and home users do not have
• UsingICCBased encoding for the page objects in the
PDF file results in the most consistent appearance of the
document, both on calibrated displays and when printed
© 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved. © 2001, Prestia Color Consulting. All Rights Reserved.
Conclusions - 2
• Forprepress workflows where ICCBased colors need
sent without conversion when reprinting to the original
output device it may be advisable to convert all colors to
the same ICCBased definition
• Then use “Same as Source” when imaging to the original device
• PDF Export has many implementations
• UsingDistiller with PostScript files is often a more reliable
approach
• Checking and correcting color encodings in PDF
requires a third party tool
• Enfocus PitStop is the most appropriate choice for PDF workflows
leveraging ICCBased color definitions
References
• Enfocus:
[Link]
• Lantana:
[Link]
• Lou Prestia
10