Creating FOGRA39-compliant profiles with different black generation curves - ECI-EN

28 Oct 2014

      Hello,

How can one recreate the ECI ISO Coated v2 profile with different
black generation strategies?

Here is the reason why I want to do that. I prepare color separations
of RGB images for offset presses. I just use Photoshop's Convert to
Profile command with the relative colorimetric or perceptual intent
(depending on the image). I like the saturated colors produced by the
ECI ISO Coated v2 profile, as well as by the Adobe Coated FOGRA39 (ISO
12647-2:2004) profile. But there are a couple of annoying issues that
could be solved by adjusting black generation.

1) Suppressing black generation in skin tones (highlights to midtones)
and using cyan instead. Deep shadows should keep having full black.
Skin tones without the black ink tend to look better, especially under
suboptimal printing conditions.

2) Maximizing black generation. That's useful in two cases. First, for
black-and-white and nearly black-and-white (slightly toned)
photographs. When the images must use rich black for deep shadows, one
cannot resort to using only the black ink. Second, for colored line
art that for some reason came in raster form. Thin dark lines must be
separated with maximum black generation to alleviate any
misregistration on press.

Also, sometimes it is necessary to adjust total area coverage for an
otherwise perfect color profile.

Photoshop's custom CMYK profile functionality appears to shrink the
gamut of the resulting profile without any good reason. According to
Adobe's Chris Cox, that feature is obsolete and can't be used to mimic
the FOGRA39 profiles. https://forums.adobe.com/message/6874119

What tools can I use to solve the above issues? Where do I start? What
tools do you use to prepare and generate FOGRA-compatible ICC
profiles?

I would appreciate any pointers to relevant information.

Best regards,
Alexander Konovalenko