Reworking Design in RGB to look good in CMYK?

[Gemini80]

Hi all! I can't tell you how lucky I am to have found this forum! You folks are really so kind and helpful!

 

I am fairly new to design and wanted to have something printed today (making stickers) and learned that print is done in CMYK color format...well, whoopdidoo - haha - ya learn something new every day!

 

I converted my project to CMYK and immediately a great deal of color vibrance was lost.

 

My question is:

 

1. Does anyone have a good method or strategy to convert a design already done in RGB8 to CMYK and get the look of the original design back? 

[henryanthony]

19 hours ago, Gemini80 said:

1. Does anyone have a good method or strategy to convert a design already done in RGB8 to CMYK and get the look of the original design back? 

Sorry, no. Even a CMYK file will not print the way it looks on screen. We are talking the difference between photons emitted from an electronic device compared to photons reflected from dry ink on paper. So, back to square one.

CMYK designs are best done using a trusted printed reference standard such as Pantone swatch books. Trumatch comes to mind as well. Their selection of colors are a bit different and are nice to have. It has been a long while since I have worked designing for print so there may be more references available. These will show you how specific CMYK color combinations will look printed on coated and uncoated paper stock. These references are fairly costly but a must have for professional work. Affinity includes color palettes from Pantone which is great but you can't see the color as it will appear in its final printed form.

Be aware of designing with Black in CMYK. Process Black (K) is a fairly thin color that, at 100% looks like it is "washed out" for lack of a better description. It just does not cover well or look good. When using large areas of black or large type, black should be specified as Rich Black. Some call it 4-Color Black. This is often specified as:

• C - 60%
• M - 40%
• Y - 40%
• K - 100%

Be forewarned, if you specify a large are of Process Black, the printer will be challenged to produce a good solid or rich black. They will be forced to add a lot more black ink which in turn will darken and basically kill any 4-color images on the page. Using a rich black will make everything come alive and look great.

Different combinations can give slightly different results. A little cooler or warmer, etc. It is a good idea to discuss this with your printer so you don't exceed the maximum amount of ink their printing presses flow on a page. For black body copy and other small type, just use Process Black 100%. Of course you can specify type however you decide. It does not need to be black.

And, let's not forget white. With a CMYK design, you never want the white areas of photos to be completely devoid of ink and let the bare paper show through. This is especially true on coated paper stock and is visibly noticeable and looks bad. Make sure these areas are filled with something like:

• C - 1%
• M - 1%
• Y - 2%

Again, talk with your printer about this. Your printer wants your job to look great so that you become a repeat customer. FYI, I learned all of the above from a really great printing rep from a really great printing company. It was the first printer I ever worked with and was a stroke of luck for me. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not using Rich Black on a project and, a project that could have looked good looked like crap. Fortunately for me, the client did not notice or did not care.

[thomaso]

20 hours ago, Gemini80 said:

I converted my project to CMYK and immediately a great deal of color vibrance was lost.

For future print projects it is helpful to select the CMYK slider in the colour panel + activate its lock button across the entire layout phase. This ensures that even in an RGB document colour space, the colours you create/use will look pretty much the same on screen & in print, for instance if placed on a website, too. For truly / completely matching colours in different media, you need a monitor whose hardware is capable of displaying all the colours used AND which is correctly calibrated.

As long as you do not use adjustments layers or filters, even RGB may be used as the colour space for the layout document. Some users prefer this method to avoid a colour conversion step, especially if you do not yet know during the layout phase the later print profile.

[Gemini80]

Thanks a lot for your reply! I am actually just now prepping designs that were done in RGB to be sold/printed on RedBubble - it is a website that prints designers' artwork on various materials - everything from posters to clothes - I need to convert my RGB designs to CMYK and am new to the process and kind of dreading it.

If I understand your reply correctly you are say that any processing layers (vibrance, levels, contrast, brightness, etc) will cause an RGB design to look even more different when converted to CMYK, correct?

 

Can you please explain the color lock button again - are you saying I should lock the CMYK slider (in my RGB designs) and then convert to CMYK?

 

Thanks for your patience and help!!

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Gemini80]

lacerto!! Your reply is nothing short of brilliant! You really know your stuff. It is a real joy when people share their knowledge like this. I am very grateful!

Yeah, I have been in touch with Redbubble about this issue and I basically called them on their very loose and non realistic approach to showing designs on their website vs how they will really look when printed. Today I asked them if I can send an RGB and CMYK file, one file for their web shop and the other for printing - of course I will have to do my best to match these two files which is a bit of a pain - I will report back when I get a reply from them.

Redbubble's website says: 'In order to avoid color shifts, we recommend creating your designs in the CMYK color space and then saving the file in sRGB to upload it to Redbubble.'

While I am still a beginner, is this even possible in Affinity Designer or Photo? I mean, I know how to switch the color format in a project - but nowhere in the export panel did I see the option for saving a project with a different color format than what was initially used. Is this possible?

Thanks for your help and patience - it is much appreciated! 

[thomaso]

On 2/13/2023 at 6:42 AM, lacerto said:

Do the following changes to the copy:

1) Change the color mode to CMYK/8.

29 minutes ago, Gemini80 said:

lacerto!! Your reply is nothing short of brilliant!

In addition to @lacerto's detailed & profound description, another aspect becomes useful in cases where you already have the document in the wanted colour space (RGB or CMYK) but need a different profile for export (<- change the profile only, not the space). Then "Assign" instead of "Convert" helps to maintain the definitions of colour swatches.

A short description by @Chris26:

More detailed again by @lacerto in this post (as quote), respectively below / above.
It's a quite long thread, a search in your browser window for "assign" will help to detect & jump to relevant parts.
Note: In Affinity you can't achieve the same result with an export setting, so it is required to adjust the document setting first.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Gemini80]

Thank you Lacerto and Thomaso for your advice. After more correspondence with Redbubble, no, they do not & will not specify a CMYK color profile which is frustrating.

Redbubble has an article: https://blog.redbubble.com/2017/05/designing-in-cmyk-vs-rgb/ in which they 'loosely' detail how a file should be prepared.

This quote is from the article:

'If you create your new designs in CMYK, there should be no dramatic shifts when you export your designs as PNG (which can only be RGB), and then back to CMYK during the physical printing process. Getting in the habit of starting your new designs and illustrations in CMYK, and saving them as your master files, allows you more control over your designs and ultimately less work in the long run.'

I did not know that if you save a file as a PNG it changes to RGB even if the original file was done in a CMYK color format - interesting, but still seems not the ideal way to go for 'print accuracy.'

As you probably can tell, I am still pretty confused, even after having read quite a lot on this subject. Oops 😅. If in my shoes, considering the info Redbubble gives about what files they want, how would you proceed if your aim is twofold: have your designs look the best they can on a screen & have customers be happy with their prints and not feel they look too different in real life?

As always, thanks for your patience! 

 

 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Gemini80]

Thanks Lacerto so much for your reply! The Redbubble employee I messaged with had no idea about CMYK profiles so I will let Affinity's default (US Web Coated Version SWOP2) handle that as it's impossible to know in which countries my designs will be purchased and printed the most.

 

Your suggestions are great - I am just not 100% sure how to implement a few of them:

1. If I design in RGB format and use a Soft Proof layer, I assume I set it to the aforementioned US Web Coated Version SWOP2, correct?

2. If I design in RGB mode and use Soft Proof, is the idea to keep Soft proof on the whole time? Or is the idea to switch it on and off and try to achieve a result where the design looks good with both Soft Proof on and off - kind of like a middle ground?

3. You suggest exporting as a TIFF and then converting to sRGB PNG - If I understand correctly I would open the TIFF and go to 'Document Setup' and change the color format & profile there to RGB8/sRGB - or when exporting it to a PNG I export it as an sRGB under the advanced tab in the 'Export' window? Sorry, confused.

The attached images are interesting because the first shows the original RGB, the second shows the RGB converted to CMYK, and the third shows the RGB with Soft Proof on - if you compare the Soft Proof version with the CMYK converted version they are looking very different...any idea why?

Thanks for your ongoing patience! I will actually be helping a friend with her designs for printing (next week) so I will be able to pass along your knowledge which is really cool. 

 

[thomaso]

19 minutes ago, Gemini80 said:

If I design in RGB mode

In case the colours in the sky/earth are created by an effect etc., just a note: Since RGB works subtractive and CMYK additive some results may vary more obvious than others if the colour space gets switched, for instance the appearance of blend modes, adjustments or effects (~ complex calculations with colours of various layers).

[Gemini80]

Hi Thomas! I appreciate your reply - If possible are you able to answer all 3 questions? These are the points that I still do not fully understand. Thank you!!

[henryanthony]

I converted the first RGB image to CMYK and they look virtually the same. Just wondering why my conversion differs from yours. In my experience, conversion to CMYK from RGB almost always results in a less vibrant image yet yours has pumped up the gray of the moon to an ultramarine.

[Gemini80]

Hi Henry Anthony, thanks for your reply. There is a green/blue gradient over the moon - that is what you are seeing more of.

 

Are you able to answer the 3 questions I posted above? I just do not want this thread to run away from what my post was trying to solve, thanks.

[thomaso]

12 minutes ago, Gemini80 said:

If possible are you able to answer all 3 questions? These are the points that I still do not fully understand.

Sorry, I rather avoid using soft proof in Affinity, to me it appears too unreliable in Affinity.
I would recommend again @lacerto's various replies in the thread linked above ("…Global soft proof …").

Generally soft proof simulates a result only while its profile respects the conditions of a certain production process or material (e.g. print on cotton, metal, etc). So, a certain soft proof profile can have literally the task to prevent certain colours in a document, which would mean you can't adjust force these colours to appear in your document on screen.

[henryanthony]

Hi Gemini 80, I think the advice from lacerto is good and I would not want to jump in at this point regarding that advice. And I have no experience with soft proof. 

[Gemini80]

Hi Thomas - I promise have read every post in this thread and considered it - I was using a global soft proof in that it was the first layer so it effected everything. But it still does not explain why soft proof vs changing the format to CMYK still look different. I also do not truly understand the point of soft proof in that obviously I will switch back and forth and not be totally pleased with either the RGB or soft proofed (CMYK simulation) which is why I asked if the point of using soft proof is to switch it back and forth and get the design looking as good as possible in both RGB and soft proofed mode? Thanks for your help.

 

If my 3 questions above could be answered by anyone else reading this thread it really would hugely increase my understanding of how to achieve the desired results of getting my designs looking good on screens and for print.

 

Thanks again to all who are reading!

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

 

[Gemini80]

20 hours ago, lacerto said:

The benefit of working in sRGB mode and turning on CMYK as a Soft Proof adjustment only when needed is that when you export to RGB, you will get full sRGB gamut colors

Thanks a lot for your replies! - I am slowing grasping things - so when you say if I work in sRGB and then export I will get the 'full sRGB gamut colors' why is this beneficial to my printing situation? What I mean is, I assume with the full sRGB gamut I will have my designs looking great on screens and websites like Redbubble, but how does this help me for printing and CMYK? 

 

20 hours ago, lacerto said:

On the other hand, if your primary goal is to have same visual appearance both in RGB and CMYK, you could well work in CMYK color mode right from the start and specify all colors in CMYK, and get similar output in RGB and CMYK. That would e.g. mean that the RGBCMYK circles that show vibrant in the leftmost image, would show like in the rest of the images both when exported to RGB and when exported to Redbubble products that cannot reproduce full sRGB color gamut.

With the above suggestion - when you say work in CMYK and 'specify' colors you mean simply to get the design to look good in CMYK - and then export as a PNG for example to make it an RGB file? It seems to me there are too many ways here to skin a cat 😅 - and while I love options I am still too inexperienced to fully appreciate & grasp them all. 

 

I just did the following: I converted the astronaut helmet to CMYK and of course the black space background got super washed out and the bluish halo around the helmet almost disappeared - I then selected the black background layer and adjusted all of the CMYK levels to 0 and this actually got me a lot closer to the RGB original.

 

So to summarize: If my designs are made to be printed I should work in CMYK format and use the CMYK color sliders to adjust colors (not the RGB sliders), then save as PNG for RGB and I should be good, am I correct?

 

I really thank you for your patience. 🙏

 

 

[henryanthony]

Are you correct? I don't know but, that's what I would do. The people you send this work to will probably have a workflow that they use to process all their incoming jobs. They want your job to come out good so I think it will come out all right. However, I have no idea what your final product is which can have a significant impact on end product perceived quality.

 

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[thomaso]

17 hours ago, Gemini80 said:

I just did the following: I converted the astronaut helmet to CMYK and of course the black space background got super washed out and the bluish halo around the helmet almost disappeared - I then selected the black background layer and adjusted all of the CMYK levels to 0 and this actually got me a lot closer to the RGB original.

Actually you should not need to convert image sources from their initial RGB space & profile separately but let the conversion do by the document profile in the APub layout file, respectively on export.

If you convert from RGB to CMYK the Blacks should not appear "washed out". (…unless you converted to a profile which does this on purpose, for instance to avoid to exceed a certain low amount of total ink). Compare the results in @Lacerto's two CMYK examples above.

[Gemini80]

Hi Thomaso, thanks for your reply! I think at this point my comfort level is moving towards designing in CMYK and saving as a PNG - this seems the 'overall' easiest route for me - I will do my best to get my colors looking good in CMYK and hope for the best printing outcome - obviously there are arguments for other approaches but there are also equal unknown factors in the print process itself so it's almost impossible to say one approach is better than the other.

 

 

[Gemini80]

7 hours ago, lacerto said:

But because they want to have the production files in sRGB (PNG, JPG, GIF), it would make things simple to work initially in sRGB mode and then just have a peek in the approximate way the colors might look out in final products (a bit desaturated), using a CMYK based Soft Proof adjustment (even if it is not particularly accurate within Affinity apps). When ready, I would just export to sRGB. The colors would be more saturated than in the Redbubble final products, but you would not prematurely make colors flat by forcing a CMYK gamut using a profile that can only give approximate color values of the final product (as Redbubble does not specify any CMYK profile), and then converting the CMYK file back to sRGB. That process would no make color values any better even if it might give you a more realistic view of how they will look like in the final product.

Hi Lacerto, thanks for your reply! I get what you are saying with the above information - I think my last 2 questions on all of this are:

1. If I work on an RGB formatted project that will only be used for digital display, should I only use the RGB color sliders to make adjustments? - conversely, if I work on a CMYK formatted project which will be printed, should I only use the CMYK sliders to make adjustment? Yeah, this still confuses me a little bit.

2. If I have an RGB design like the Space Helmet above that was started in RGB, but I use a Soft Proof Adjustment to reference CMYK, does it matter how I then carry out the adjustments to get the Soft Proof to look better - what I mean is,  can I use both RGB & CMYK sliders to make the color changes (taking into account the Soft Proof version looks better as a result and I am still pleased with the colors when the Soft Proof adjustment is off)?

Thanks!