CMYK, PDFs and test-prints
July 5, 2019 9:16 AM Subscribe
I am planning to print a book with blurb. I've made the book in in-design using their plugin and their CMYK profile. When I save PDFx files and do test prints on ( giant built into the giant industrial photocopier) printer at work, the yellow in the cover is greenish/muddy/yucky. No amount of replacing the yellow has fixed this. What should do? Bonus question inside that anyone whose used blurb can answer.
I wanted to do test prints because I previously printed some board books with another service. There were issues with colour shift so things didn't show up well on the background colour though they were fine on monitor. I took those to staples to do test prints, but I used regular PDFs, which I now know would have been RGBs.
So this time I saved as PDFx set to CMYK with the blurb colour profile. I embedded the colour profile in the PDF. The book cover has a sizeable yellow background. It looks absolutely terrible in the prints. There aren't really any other colour issues.
I have tried editing the yellow to make it less greenish. I also tried changing the way the background is created -- I had used a giant-bigger-than-the-bleed rectangle filled with yellow originally. Since the rectangle has bad yellow and all the other picture files (which are photoshop files) were fine, I tried a new approach: I made a picture in photoshop that is just a giant yellow rectangle and placed it in the in-design file. Still muddy greeny puke.
Is my work printer likely to print colours more or less as blurb would? How worried should I be? If it's a faithful representation, how can I fix it so it prints yellow?
If it's not likely to be a faithful representation, then I'm worried that there will be something wrong with some of the other colours that look fine in these printouts. Should I be worried about that?
Note that I know blurb suggests doing a test run, but that basically means "get a book printed" which is pretty pricey to do over and over again while you correct the colour. They do not do "print a page or two on our printers, and don't bind it just send it." I only intend to get a couple of copies of the book. I'm not going to be marketing it or anything like that.
The bonus question: There's an option to include or not include a blurb logo in the book. Not including it costs more. But the description says they put it on the last page. Does that mean *MY* last page where I currently have an illustration that they will ruin with their logo? Or is it a blank page attached to the endpaper?
I wanted to do test prints because I previously printed some board books with another service. There were issues with colour shift so things didn't show up well on the background colour though they were fine on monitor. I took those to staples to do test prints, but I used regular PDFs, which I now know would have been RGBs.
So this time I saved as PDFx set to CMYK with the blurb colour profile. I embedded the colour profile in the PDF. The book cover has a sizeable yellow background. It looks absolutely terrible in the prints. There aren't really any other colour issues.
I have tried editing the yellow to make it less greenish. I also tried changing the way the background is created -- I had used a giant-bigger-than-the-bleed rectangle filled with yellow originally. Since the rectangle has bad yellow and all the other picture files (which are photoshop files) were fine, I tried a new approach: I made a picture in photoshop that is just a giant yellow rectangle and placed it in the in-design file. Still muddy greeny puke.
Is my work printer likely to print colours more or less as blurb would? How worried should I be? If it's a faithful representation, how can I fix it so it prints yellow?
If it's not likely to be a faithful representation, then I'm worried that there will be something wrong with some of the other colours that look fine in these printouts. Should I be worried about that?
Note that I know blurb suggests doing a test run, but that basically means "get a book printed" which is pretty pricey to do over and over again while you correct the colour. They do not do "print a page or two on our printers, and don't bind it just send it." I only intend to get a couple of copies of the book. I'm not going to be marketing it or anything like that.
The bonus question: There's an option to include or not include a blurb logo in the book. Not including it costs more. But the description says they put it on the last page. Does that mean *MY* last page where I currently have an illustration that they will ruin with their logo? Or is it a blank page attached to the endpaper?
You've probably thought of this, but just in case not, it may be worth re-calibrating your monitor. I've had similar issues before where it turned out the printer was fine and the monitor (and thus the files) were off.
posted by matrixclown at 10:04 AM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by matrixclown at 10:04 AM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Blurb says it adds a page at the end of your book, and that's where the logo lives. It sounds like it won't go over your material.
Looking at their info, I don't think their InDesign plugin has that much color management.
What is the actual CMYK value of your yellow? If your Cyan is too heavy, it's going to go green. If you want to share a page, maybe we can help troubleshoot.
posted by hydra77 at 10:08 AM on July 5, 2019
Looking at their info, I don't think their InDesign plugin has that much color management.
What is the actual CMYK value of your yellow? If your Cyan is too heavy, it's going to go green. If you want to share a page, maybe we can help troubleshoot.
posted by hydra77 at 10:08 AM on July 5, 2019
Best answer: I looked at my two photo blurb books and it seems like I paid not to have the logo on the first book from 7 years ago. On my latest one, there is an extra page at the back, like hydra77 mentioned. My content ends on the left hand side, then a blank right side, then the back side of that sheet (the next left hand side of the book) has a little blurb logo on the bottom in the middle of the page.
I've tried Shutterfly and Artifact Uprising and Blurb has been my favorite for color and exposure remaining consistent.
posted by icaicaer at 10:25 AM on July 5, 2019
I've tried Shutterfly and Artifact Uprising and Blurb has been my favorite for color and exposure remaining consistent.
posted by icaicaer at 10:25 AM on July 5, 2019
Work in RGB to get the color on screen you want, after.calibrating your monitor save the RGB TIFF image for print. Muddy to me has meant the file was too pixel lean in the past for me. Print from 300 ppi.
The profile you use is the paper you are printing to. The print command is let Photoshop handle the print job. CMYK conversion to print is handled in the let Photosbop handle the print job command.
posted by Oyéah at 12:09 PM on July 5, 2019
The profile you use is the paper you are printing to. The print command is let Photoshop handle the print job. CMYK conversion to print is handled in the let Photosbop handle the print job command.
posted by Oyéah at 12:09 PM on July 5, 2019
Response by poster: Oh, I should mention, the file is 300 DPI but my work printer only has the options to print 600DPI and above. Could that do it? BUt then why is it only the cover yellow that is muddy.
Here is the cover file as an in-design file, as a PDFx, and here are the photoshop files that it is built from: Content file and yellow square.
The CMYK is 15, 15, 89, 0. Should I just change the CYAN to 0 and send it off to blurb?
Oh, please don't type identifying content from the files into the question answers.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:22 PM on July 5, 2019
Here is the cover file as an in-design file, as a PDFx, and here are the photoshop files that it is built from: Content file and yellow square.
The CMYK is 15, 15, 89, 0. Should I just change the CYAN to 0 and send it off to blurb?
Oh, please don't type identifying content from the files into the question answers.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:22 PM on July 5, 2019
Best answer: That's a pretty greeny yellow to my eye. Not surprised it looks more so in ink than pixels.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:14 PM on July 5, 2019
posted by restless_nomad at 2:14 PM on July 5, 2019
Best answer: Yeah, that's not a great yellow.
I have two monitors, and the yellow looks semi-ok on my older non-calibrated monitor, but looks not good (greenish and muddy) on my newer, color calibrated monitor.
Sidenote, I'm actually pretty surprised by HOW different they look. Good info for me.
If you're looking for a nice bright yellow, something like 0/15/75/0 looks pretty nice. Give that a try (you can do it in InDesign rather than bothering with Photoshop if you want), and print it out on your nice printer to see if you like it. (adjust the M, Y, and add a little K to it if you want, but keep the C out of it.)
...What do you mean by that only the cover yellow is muddy? Are you using the exact same yellow elsewhere? And it prints differently? Are you sure there's nothing different? (different tint? different effect added?)
One other note is that using blue ink on top of the yellow background may also be providing a bit of a greenish cast. I'd use black ink on yellow, and almost always for small text. (Note, this blue isn't actually changing the yellow - it's more of a perception/optical illusion situation.)
posted by hydra77 at 2:31 PM on July 5, 2019
I have two monitors, and the yellow looks semi-ok on my older non-calibrated monitor, but looks not good (greenish and muddy) on my newer, color calibrated monitor.
Sidenote, I'm actually pretty surprised by HOW different they look. Good info for me.
If you're looking for a nice bright yellow, something like 0/15/75/0 looks pretty nice. Give that a try (you can do it in InDesign rather than bothering with Photoshop if you want), and print it out on your nice printer to see if you like it. (adjust the M, Y, and add a little K to it if you want, but keep the C out of it.)
...What do you mean by that only the cover yellow is muddy? Are you using the exact same yellow elsewhere? And it prints differently? Are you sure there's nothing different? (different tint? different effect added?)
One other note is that using blue ink on top of the yellow background may also be providing a bit of a greenish cast. I'd use black ink on yellow, and almost always for small text. (Note, this blue isn't actually changing the yellow - it's more of a perception/optical illusion situation.)
posted by hydra77 at 2:31 PM on July 5, 2019
Response by poster: Ok, thank you, everyone.
OK, I will remove all cyan from that yellow. Would I be crazy to do that and send it off to print? Blurb has a sale that ends tonight and I won't be able to re-print before tonight. I know they have sales going on pretty much all the time, but this one includes free shipping in addition to the discount, and shipping to Canada is pricey.
What I meant by "only the cover yellow is muddy" is that I'm not having any colour issues anywhere else in the document. The yellow from the cover is actually (or was originally) the same as the teapot yellow. The teapot doesn't look muddy green to my eye in the printout, but I wonder if that's about being surrounded by the blue.
Do you think I should change the teapot yellow so it has no cyan, too?
I had used the blue to coordinate-ish (it's actually not even the same blue) with the front cover, but I guess it's not even visible at the same time, so I will change text to black.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:50 PM on July 5, 2019
OK, I will remove all cyan from that yellow. Would I be crazy to do that and send it off to print? Blurb has a sale that ends tonight and I won't be able to re-print before tonight. I know they have sales going on pretty much all the time, but this one includes free shipping in addition to the discount, and shipping to Canada is pricey.
What I meant by "only the cover yellow is muddy" is that I'm not having any colour issues anywhere else in the document. The yellow from the cover is actually (or was originally) the same as the teapot yellow. The teapot doesn't look muddy green to my eye in the printout, but I wonder if that's about being surrounded by the blue.
Do you think I should change the teapot yellow so it has no cyan, too?
I had used the blue to coordinate-ish (it's actually not even the same blue) with the front cover, but I guess it's not even visible at the same time, so I will change text to black.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 2:50 PM on July 5, 2019
The Blurb color profile is going to be specific to their printers, which is likely different enough from your office printer’s profile that you’re sending the wrong numbers to your local printer. Create a version of the pdf with the correct profile for your office printer & see what you get, or do the dumbed-down thing, strip CMYK profiles out of it completely, save it as RGB & let the printer manage color, & see if those look as bad before you panic. Blurb has likely taken into account the stock they print on as well, which can make a huge difference.
(I spent a week once trying to get Armstrong Foundation yellow out of an HP 5000 & we had to build a custom profile with that specific color edited in the HP’s color look-up table, so I feel your pain)
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:51 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]
(I spent a week once trying to get Armstrong Foundation yellow out of an HP 5000 & we had to build a custom profile with that specific color edited in the HP’s color look-up table, so I feel your pain)
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:51 PM on July 5, 2019 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thank you, everyone! Book ordered!
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:06 PM on July 5, 2019
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:06 PM on July 5, 2019
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In terms of color: we were happy with their color fidelity and rendition. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with your test prints (although if your industrial photocopier is anything like the one that lives a floor down from my office, color fidelity and accuracy isn't something I'd use it for regardless).
As to the Blurb logo, my recollection is that it doesn't overlay any of your material.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 10:01 AM on July 5, 2019