Saving as CMYK and exporting as JPG

[LyndaKuit]

Hi,

I wonder if you can help - I need to submit images to a printer and they want the following specs:

• CMYK or greyscale images only.

• Colour profiles – You can use any generic CMYK colour profile. We will manage colour before printing, to reduce ink coverage to an acceptable level for newsprint.

• Submitted images must be no more than 5MB 300dpi uncompressed jpeg digital files.

My files are CMYK tiffs. I cannot figure out how to save them as jpegs with CMYK settings. I've tried selecting CMYK/8 and Fotograf 39 as space and profile, but all I get when I look at the photo details in Windows is a file size of 35MB and the colour space is defined as uncalibrated.

Thanks.

 

[Ldina]

@LyndaKuit Exporting as a CMYK JPG with a specific CMYK profile shouldn't be a problem. On Export, select JPG, CMYK/8, then specify the CMYK profile you want and embed it so they know the profile you used as a reference (or do not embed, and tell them what profile you used in your transmittal, which will keep the file size smaller, since no profile will be physically embedded in the image). I selected a Newsprint profile since they specifically mentioned newsprint. See Screenshot attached. 

The bigger challenge may be keeping the file size below 5MB, depending on your pixel dimensions, mainly because they asked for 300 dpi uncompressed. I had to use a JPG compression of 87% to get this medium sized, 4000 x 2248 pixel image down to about 5MB. That should print up fine if your image is 300 PPI at the final print size. 

When I viewed the file in MAC Finder, the file shows as CMYK and includes the embedded CMYK profile. 

[NotMyFault]

5 hours ago, LyndaKuit said:

Submitted images must be no more than 5MB 300dpi uncompressed jpeg digital files.

I would ask the printer if these instructions are correct. Combining these 3 restrictions in this way does not make sense, unless the size of the printout is limited to e.g. stamps.

According to Wikipedia:

There is an optional lossless mode defined in the JPEG standard. However, this mode is not widely supported in products.

what is the physical size of the print, and the pixel size of the digital image?

[LyndaKuit]

@NotMyFault - Images must be able to fit within the proportions of 562mm x 365mm. My actual tiffs are 6000px x 4000px at 300 dpi.

 

@Ldina - thanks for the screenshot. This what I've been trying too, but also having no luck with uncompressed file size.

 

I have emailed the printer to see if the specs given are correct.

[Ldina]

Lynda,

What are the final dimensions that you want your file printed to? Is 562mm x 365mm your final print size, or is it much smaller than their maximum limit? If so, have you resampled the image to your physical print size at 300 PPI?

JPEG at 100% quality (i.e., no compression) will result in a very large file size. Even lowering it to 98% or 95% makes quite a difference. You are unlikely to see the difference in print, especially if your output is Newsprint, which usually has lower quality and a sizable dot gain (ink spread when ink hits the paper). I've sent dozens of jobs to print over the years, usually on higher quality coated stocks, and even on quality papers, output was fine with a fair amount of JPG compression, e.g., 80%. Unless you are printing something rather small, you won't be able to meet their filesize limit on a large dimension print using their uncompressed specifications. 

Also, the sharper your original image is, the lower the compression efficiency, because the algorithm is trying to retain all that fine edge detail. You can experiment with adding a small Gaussian Blur (maybe 0.3 to 0.5 pixels) to the image, which will slightly reduce fine edge sharpness detail. This is another trick to increase JPG compression efficiency and will help reduce file size of your final JPG. 

The CMYK Newsprint profile I used in my example has a file size of 654KB, so not embedding it in the file will reduce file size by that amount. 

[LyndaKuit]

@Ldina - the specs they provided are as I've given above "Images must be able to fit within the proportions of 562mm x 365mm". I think I'll have to contact them for clarification. Thanks for you help.