Do you convert to CMYK before printing?

[dod]

Just wondering, reading a few different places there seems to be mixed views. If you do are your results better?

 

[dazzajl]

RGB for me unless it's going to litho print.

From everything I've been told by colour management techie types nearly all inkjet printers are RGB machines, despite the fact that they use CMYK inks. Yeah I know, it leaves me a bit onders: too.

 

[ppuga]

As Dazzajl just write.

If you are going to print in a photo lab or a home printer, is best to use RGB, unless you have a CMYK inks and the printer is correctly calibrated and configured to work that way.

If you are going to send a photo for internet use, go RGB.
If you are going to send a photo for a printed media (Magazine, color newspaper, etc), go CMYK.

 

[dod]

cheers guys, this printing lark still confuses me

 

[CT]

In theory, an inkjet printer is capable of producing all the colours in the spectrum, including black. In practice however, they can only produce a sort of muddy brown, which is why inkjet printers have a black ink cartridge.

 

[digitalfailure]

i'll be waiting with a fist full of cash for the first person who can come up with a standard for colour management which will be perfect from camera to monitor and monitor to printer.

 

[Arkady]

Just remember if you convert to CMYK, the gamut is narrower - pixels of the same colour are discarded and in the case of certain mid-greys are replaced with Process Black for print purposes.

DO NOT EVER convert back to RGB as all of the lost information is gone forever and the resulting images will look horrible. Might appear OK on the monitor, but Horrible, trust me - just had an afternoon with the Gurus from Adobe and my head's still reeling from all the info...

If I ever manage to make sense of any of it, I'll post up here - there was another good way of converting to Mono, which I'll try and get down ASAP.

 

[Gandhi]

i'll be waiting with a fist full of cash for the first person who can come up with a standard for colour management which will be perfect from camera to monitor and monitor to printer.

Until everybody has the same camera/monitor/printer/paper/ink/light combination your money is pretty much safe dude!


Most printers use CYMK inks but do the conversion through the drivers or hardware form your RGB colour space, be it S or adobe or whatever.

If you are doing pre-press work, i.e. authoring your own coffee table book (I wish!) Then you need to be working in LAB or CYMK, but your print company will provide you with the profiles to soft proof your images to their needs. If they are any good

TBH Colour management is blackest of arts as far as digital imaging is concerned. If what you get out of your printer is close to your monitor output then all is good!