Dear subscriber to the ECI mailing list,
we are happy to share the following news with you:
Technical Page 2 of the Altona Test Suite 2.0 released
Berlin, December 21, 2011: The Technical Page 2 of the Altona Test Suite 2.0 is available for download from this website immediately. Developed during many months of hard work by ECI, bvdm, FOGRA and Ugra, the Altona Test Suite 2.0 offers a unique method to test components and systems in digital prepress and print workflows for their capability to process PDF/X-4.
The Altona Test Suite 2.0 consists of several parts. At this time, only the «Technical Page 2» is made available. The remaining parts of Altona Test Suite 2.0 will be made available in the 2nd quarter of 2012.
The «Altona Technical 2» addresses transparency, OpenType fonts, optional content (aka layers), JPEG2000 compression, smooth shades, overprint, 16-bit images and more.
Extensive documentation explains the structure of the test page and offers guidelines for the evaluation of results achieved by processing the Altona Technical 2 page.
The only support option available for users of the Altona Test Suite consists of the possibility to subscribe to the ECI mailing list and submit any questions or feedback on the ECI mailing list which are monitored by the authors of the Altona Test Suite.
Please go to the section “Downloads” of this website to download the Altona Test Suite files.
Important notice: The Altona Test Suite may be used freely, but must not be redistributed without receiving prior permission in writing from the ECI. No guarantee is given that the Alton Test Suite is without error. Any use is completely under the risk of the person or company using the Altona Test Suite. There are no liabilities should the use of the Altona Test Suite lead to direct or consequential damages.
We hope you find this new addition to the resources of the European Color Initiative useful - please let us know what you think about the new test page (preferably through this mailing list)!
With only a few days left until the end of this year we would like to close this email with our best wishes to you and your families - Happy holidays and a peaceful and successful New Year 2012!
Olaf Drümmer, Florian Süßl
European Color Initiative (ECI)
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European Color Initiative (ECI) | c/o callas software GmbH | Schönhauser Allee 6/7 | 10119 Berlin
Tel +49.30.4439031-0 | Fax +49.30.4416402 | o.druemmer(a)callassoftware.com | www.eci.org
Chairman: Olaf Drümmer | Vice Chairman: Florian Süßl
Hi Thibaut,
Chris already answered your questions, just to put his statements to a more practical level:
- the reason behind you have both "no conversion" and "convert to destination (preserve numbers)" is that you can place a multitude of image types into an InDesign document. I suggested to you to start with your own device CMYK (your printer's color space), because this way you will be very 'close' to your final output, doing edits the most direct way. But there are many other kinds of workflows. Consider agencies, which develop raw ideas into final advertisements for different output channels (medias), like print (sheetfed), print (newspaper), print (banners), web, tablets, etc. All those output channels require a different kind of color output. A very clever approach among agencies is to drop RGB images into Indesign, and let it do the conversion for the final intended output. This way they can use only one version of the key graphics elements, they don't need to make a different (CMYK) version for the different print outputs - Indesign's doing the separation on the fly, at the time of PDF creation. So, there must be a way to turn RGB elements to CMYK, but retain CMYK elements in their original form: this is what "Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)" does. On the other hand, there are even more sophisticated workflows around. You can author a PDF file with all the graphics elements stuffed into it in their original color space, and let the conversion done by an advanced color server somewhere down the line. This is how advanced PDF/X-4 workflows achieve outstanding results - and it starts with a "No Conversion" setting in Indesign.
- For practical reasons, you should set you working color spaces to the most often used color spaces among your jobs. I guess sRGB for RGB and ISO Coated v2 for CMYK would be a good choice, as most of the RGB data one can encounter nowadays is sRGB, and you already indicated that ISO Coated v2 is your intended output. As Chris said, all the created documents from now on will inherit these color spaces assigned to them. You should also set your default color conversion policies to RGB: "Preserve Embedded Profiles" and CMYK: "Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)". These settings will also be inherieted by new documents. Now, if you place CMYK images into a new document, and you produce a PDF file, the color percentages in the images will stay the same (the separations will be intact) if you choose "No Conversion" or "Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers). Be aware, that in the former setting, any RGB or Lab elements will be inserted as such into the PDF, which might cause you trouble at the time of RIPping. You can still force Indesign to perform a color conversion, though. By using the "Convert to Destination" setting, you can convert all elements to a designated color space, for example to make a proof on a printer, for which you have an accurate ICC profile. In this case, if you set the Destination color space to your Document Color space ( = the two spaces are the same), then a null conversion is performed, so the resulting CMYK data (numbers, percentages, separations) again identical to the original.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Peter Nagy
Colorcom Media
Budapest, Hungary
Hi Thibaut,
a lot of questions, which might be answered best at a thorough local training at your site, as Jan-Peter said. Without knowing your specific problems, some guidelines:
1. OutputIntent in PDF/X is to communicate the intented color representation of the graphics. You might print to some very different papers, which can't be simulated (or even unknown) to the submitters of your graphics files. So it's easier for all of you to acquire data in a standardised color space (eg.: ISO Coated v2, aka FOGRA 39), which is well known now for of the graphics artists.
2. In your in-house production workflow you might use PDF/X and OutputIntents, but at your level it's not really necessary, because you always know the output color space (which is defined by the material you're printing on, the used inks and other process parameters). So a good practice would be to specify FOGRA 39 / ISO Coated v2 as the submission color space for your clients, but work in Illustrator in your final printing color space. You may mess around with OutputIntents if you have a lot of various materials to print on (and you have their ICC color profiles), or if you have a large staff and a sophisticated workflow. Otherwise the best would be to define each job's color space in a job ticket right at the start, and use that info throughout the production, and leave PDF/X alone, at least in-house.
3. Working in your specific, job-based CMYK color space is a must in the packaging industry. This helps you avoid most of the problems which may arise at the time of printing, and of course helps you softproof your jobs in CS application (provided you assigned the correct ICC profile to the document).
4. The difference between 'Convert to Destination' and 'Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)' is that the former mode always convert colors if they differ from the chosen output color space, while the latter doesn't. Example: you placed an image to InDesign, which has the color profile "SWOP v2" embedded. You output the design to PDF and choose the destination to be ISO Coated v2. "Convert to destination" will re-separate the image from SWOP v2 to ISO Coated v2 during the process, but the 'Preserve Numbers' will not: it will retain the exact separation of the original image. What's the catch? If you get images in a wrong color space, you might think that all of them must be converted. Alas, CS applications perform an ICC-based conversion, which means the black separation data will be lost – all the black type (and black-only elements) will go CMYK, they will be present in all separations. This is a disaster in most cases.
5. Sorry to say, the behavior of the 'Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)' option is somewhat different in CS applications and versions. That means CS2 Indesign may produce a different PDF than say CS3 Illustrator with that option choosen. This is why I suggest you to leave the conversion in InDesign or Illustrator alone, and use the 'Don't convert' option (of course this way you have to be sure that all placed graphic is in your output color space).
6. How to handle overinking, and different color spaces? The solution to that is to manually re-purpose, re-separate all incoming graphics with some very clever approach in Photoshop, or to use a device-link conversion engine, which can put the graphic to a different color space, while retaining the black separation.
7. PDF/X-4 is very important to you, as a properly authored file can contain the source data in a very abstract form. That means your task in Illustrator is much easier (the images are intact, all the graphic elements are intact and movable, there's no flattening applied, which might ruin the editability). I would say that the best for you would be to specify PDF/X-4 with OutputIntent: ISO Coated v2 as your preferred incoming data format.
Kind regards,
Peter Nagy
Colorcom Media
Budapest, Hungary
Dear all,
I work for a small packaging company whose activity consist of printing (offset), cutting and folding cardboard. Since not long, we have decided to handle PDF files from the client and produce the offset plates ourselves because we had too many problems with external providers. The change has been pretty quick and now that everything is +/- OK, we would like to improve greatly and manage color correctly.
I have read many website as well as the “Digital Color Management” book from Jan-Peter Homann, but there are still a few things that remain unclear. It seems obvious that there are a few key elements that I haven’t understood and it will be of great help if you could shed some light on these matters.
I have read everywhere that the PDF files sent by the clients should be CMYK that contain no ICC-profile. It still doesn’t make sense for me at the moment. I know I am wrong, but I don’t understand why.
1) When you set up a PDF document (eg. in Illustrator or CS Suite), you need to set up you working space. Mine for CMYK documents is defined on “ISO Coated v2 ECI”. What does it do actually ? Does it apply an ICC profile ? Does it transform colors ? I really don’t understand the mechanism ...
2) When you export your PDF (I know I should use PDF/X but I do need to keep transparency and separate layers), in the “Output” section.
--> I need to choose “Convert to Destination (Preserve numbers)”
--> Destination should be the same as working space (thus ISO coated v2 ECI) for correct color management
--> ICC profile should not be included
--> Output intent should be defined
Is that right ? If it is, here is what I don’t get :
- What is the difference between “Convert to Destination (Preserve numbers)” and “Convert to Destination”. In other words, what does the “Preserve numbers” option actually does ?
- What would change if the ICC profile was included ? How will it inpede color management at the next steps ? I thought a document or image should always have an ICC profile associated so that software knew how to treat it ...
- Does the output intent actually as an impact when opening the files in an application or is it just text information for the viewer that says how it should be printed ?
- Do RGB images previously converted in Photoshop (let’s say for Iso coated) and then inserted in the PDF still contain ICC profile when the PDF is exported ?
I am sure you have now realised that I still have not correctly understood color managmeent. This is why I am sending you this mail. Usually I would never do that, but I can’t find the answer anywhere else and I think it’s important to understand these concepts correctly.
I hope some of you can help me
Kind regards,
Thibaut SIMONART
