• Adobe Illustrator

  Importing RGB Photo into CMYK project

  Posted by Laurence Manly on November 18, 2010 at 10:43 am

  Hello,

  This is perhaps a very basic question. Please bear with me.

  I’ve downloaded a 30 day trial version of Illustrator and even though I’ve bought “Illustrator For Dummies”, I still need to answer this.

  I need to finish up with a CMYK end product. Am I better off doing the whole thing in RGB and then switching at the end, and is it as simple as that?
  Bought Illustrator for Dummies, and that seems to be what the book recommends.

  But is it really as easy as just changing to CMYK?

  And other question, which is sort of linked.

  I have to import a photo from Photoshop. As I only have Photoshop Elements, it only does RGB.
  If I import the RGB photo, will Illustrator convert it to CMYK, or do I need to use Photoshop to convert it before importing it?
  Does that make sense?

  Thanks for any help.

  Ryan Hilterbran replied 15 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Les Nemeth

  November 18, 2010 at 1:42 pm

  The reason they recommend doin most of your work in RGB, because it has a much wider gamut and as such, more colors are available. Not only that, but various Effect and Filter features only work in RGB mode and are not available once you switch to CMYK. Once you are done with RGB, you can switch your document to CMYK. However, if you are not using Effects in your project, you can work in CMYK just fine.

  This does not apply to imported images, however. You need to change the color mode of your images to CMYK before you send your work to the printer.

  If you link your images, you can change the color mode later, before you send it to print. But if you embed the image(s) it’s better to change it to CMYK first, cuz chaces are you are going to forget it and you will send a CMYK document with an embedded RGB image to the printer. And then they will send it back to you to change it.
• 

  Les Nemeth

  November 18, 2010 at 1:45 pm

  I didn’t see that you said you only have Elements and it does not do CMYK. I did not know that. In that case, AI will not convert your images to CMYK. You need to do it in a program that can do that (like PS).
• 

  Laurence Manly

  November 19, 2010 at 10:20 pm

  Many thanks for your help.
  I’ve downloaded a trial of Photoshop and converted my images CMYK (FOGRA27).

  Thanks again.
  Laurence
• 

  Ryan Hilterbran

  March 2, 2011 at 7:05 am

  Yes, you can easily convert back and forth with Illustrator or Photoshop. However, you will see a slight color difference, especially with reds.

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